Ten months ago, during a psychological exam at a state-run shelter for children, Robert “Yummy” Sandifer was asked to complete this sentence: “I am very . . .”
His answer: “sick.”
The boy, then 10 years old and facing charges for attempted armed robbery, constantly had to be reassured that this was not a police interrogation, that he was not in trouble. He seemed to see the worst-even in himself-and to expect it from others.
The portrait that emerges in the report reinforces much of what already is known of the 11-year-old boy, first sought this week as a fugitive for murder and then found slain in a tunnel.
As police mounted their hunt for him, this much quickly became apparent about the boy: his past was marked by abuse and chaos, and he went from victim to victimizer by the age of 9. In prose, both clinical and heartbreaking, the psychological report fills in that picture, sharpening and deepening any understanding of the boy.
“Robert is a child growing up without any encouragement and support,” the examiner wrote. “He is lonely and feels poorly about himself. He has a sense of failure that has infiltrated almost every aspect of his inner self.
“Since he is so bound up in trying to manage negative feelings of inadequacy on the inside, and the pressure his environment is exerting from the outside, Robert is emotionally flooded.”
There is a foreshadowing of violence in the next observations: “His response to this flooding is to back away from demanding situations and act out impulsively and unpredictably.”
Later, the report says: “He is caught up in a never-ending cycle of emotional overload and acting out. His anger is so great that his perception of the world is grossly distorted and inaccurate.”
Even though the boy was in the care of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, not in court or jail, he thought of himself as “servin’ time.”
When he heard a walkie-talkie in the corridor, he bolted to his feet to look for police.
The words the psychologist used to describe the troubled child in the lime-green jeans and food-stained sweatshirt were: suspicious, wary, rejected, isolated.
He tended to evaluate relationships with people, even loved ones, by how much they could give him materially.
As one neighbor put it Thursday, the day Robert’s body was found, “With his background, he was destined for trouble.”
Another neighbor, a 15-year-old girl, talked about how her friendship with Robert was forged because of shared pain.
“We connected,” she said. “We are both depressed. We don’t have so many things other people have, education, so many things.
“We have pain about a lot of things. He just hid it. He never talked about it. He figured nobody cared.”
During his psychological testing, Robert was asked why he felt sick. “I didn’t say that,” he replied. “I ain’t sick.”
The psychological report and other state documents also help explain why some people, including Cook County Public Guardian Patrick Murphy, maintain the boy never had a chance in life.
In addition to the abuse that Robert and his siblings suffered-what appeared to be cigarette burns and markings from beatings with an electrical cord-the reports tell of a fractured family.
His mother, Lorina Sandifer, now 29, was described in one evaluation at age 21 as someone who tends to “disown responsibility.” Lorina, who was first pregnant at 15, had difficulty picking up her public aid checks on time, the report noted.
“In this examiner’s opinion, there is no reason to believe that Lorina Sandifer will ever be able to adequately meet her own needs, let alone to meet the needs of her growing family, which soon will be consisting of five children,” a psychiatrist noted in a report to the juvenile court, when DCFS first intervened with the family in 1986.
The same report noted: “There certainly has never been any stability in Lorina Sandifer’s life throughout her developmental periods to the present time.”
At the time of the 1986 examiner’s report, Lorina had four children, with Robert the second youngest. She was pregnant and would have three more children.
The father of her first four children, a year older than the 21-year-old Lorina, lived with her for a time but then drifted out of the family’s life. Police said he is in jail in Wisconsin.
Another state report detailed that Lorina blamed Robert’s father for injuries the boy suffered at age 2 1/2-scratches on his neck and bruises on his arms and torso. She then recanted that story, according to the report.
Lorina’s problems with children have continued lately. On April 25, she was charged with child endangerment because she left four of her children alone in a parked car while she attended court at 11th and State Streets.
On that day, she was appearing in court on a 1993 shoplifting charge for allegedly stealing clothes from a Kmart. Lorina, who has had more than 30 misdemeanor cases against her since 1984, was sentenced to six months’ court supervision for the shoplifting.
Lorina’s mother, Jannie Fields, was born in Mississippi and grew up part of a family of 27, according to Fields and state reports. Fields said she had 14 children of her own.
In 1986, the DCFS concluded that the children had suffered from neglect and abuse, and Fields was awarded custody of the Sandifer children. Still, Fields-then and now-refused to believe her grandchildren had been harmed.
“She attempts to almost immediately dispute and deny the previous allegations. . .,” the 1986 report said.
“In this examiner’s opinion, the placement with the maternal grandmother is not a good placement for these children, who are in need of placement in a warm, nurturing environment, which they have never known.”
But Fields got the children, and she said she raised her daughter’s four children along with five of her own.
In November 1993, the public guardian’s office cited Robert’s criminal record and gang flirtations in getting him removed from the Fields home in the Roseland neighborhood and returned to DCFS.
After the psychological report on Robert was completed, it didn’t take long for DCFS to realize that the boy was beyond control. At a residential group home earlier this year, he fought an instructor and then escaped the home.
In July, a juvenile court judge returned Robert to Fields for a temporary stay while DCFS tried to find an out-of-state locked facility that would take him and, perhaps, rehabilitate him.
A DCFS caseworker argued against the placement, saying the grandmother had been unable to keep track of Robert in the past.
One thing that cannot be disputed is that Robert did, in fact, like being with his grandmother.
“When asked where home is, Robert responded that home is living with his maternal grandmother,” the psychological report said, “and that she is `nice because she buy me everything I want, clothes, toys, games, and she is a good cook.’ He also reported that `grandpa is nice, too; he took me to the store and bought me toys, clothes and shoes.’ “
Fields has maintained that Robert’s story has been distorted, that not only was he innocent of any wrongdoing, but he had not been abused. She said the marks found by DCFS while he was with his mother and father were from a bad case of chicken pox.
“No one failed him,” she said. “I tried to do everything I could for him. If the black kids had as much as the white kids, they would be much better kids.”
She said he would have to walk many blocks to find recreational facilities and that in traveling through the streets he became a part of their mean character.
Another relative, great-aunt Thenesia McGee, said, “When the streets get a hold of a child, there is nothing you can do.”
His psychological reported noted, that “although Robert is physically a child, he tried very hard to impress the examiner by acting like a street-wise adolescent who is unafraid of everything.”
But he did show his childlike side at other times.
Last week, Robert visited the neighborhood school he had not attended this year, Van Vlissingen School, to chat with a staff member he liked.
“He said he had a frog at home and wanted to give this gift to the staff member,” said Principal Jacqueline Carothers.
“He was smiling and happy, an 11-year-old child.”
