To Hug a Porcupine

Debbie and Jorge engaged the boys in activities that even privileged kids would envy. The family camped, canoed, and swam with dolphins. They all did yoga at the YMCA. Since little James loved Curious George, a real monkey came to his birthday party. Brian decorated his bedroom with an astronomy theme, and when the Kennedy Space Center opened its Hall of Fame, Brian and Matthew cut the ribbon. They met some of the world's most famous astronauts.

The family even rented a pasture in Boynton Beach and bought two miniature therapeutic horses, Dakota and Magic. Debbie, a talented photographer, would later take pictures of James in a field with the creatures. In the sepia-toned images, he wears a cowboy hat, and the sun pours down like honey. The pictures would haunt them years later.

The boys' bad behavior had no particular trigger. "Not a rhyme or reason," Jorge says. "You could go to dinner and feel like it was a good day." They'd play chess or talk about world events, and minutes later, violence would erupt. Therapists described both parents as cooperative and patient. Angulo called them "loving... to a fault." They would need to watch out for themselves.

Debbie was delighted one day when Matthew, without prompting, brought her a glass of root beer. How thoughtful. She spent the next two days in the bathroom, violently ill. Matthew would later admit to collecting chicken blood from uncooked dinners and spiking her drink. He got the idea when she'd lectured the kids about salmonella, and he had tried it a couple of times, he said, before getting the formula right.

Socializing became a problem. Debbie and Jorge allowed visits with friends who had kids, but every venture ended in allegations. They stole something or bit someone or touched other children in ways that could lead to lawsuits. The family retreated. They abandoned church.

Isolating the boys at home became a necessity, therapists believed. The house was transformed with aquariums and LEGO stations. Angulo described it as "a velvet-lined steel box."

"James at 7 didn't know the letter a," Debbie says. "After being homeschooled for a year, he was reading at middle-school level. Now he can read a novel a day." Each of the three boys, she says, has a genius IQ. James is a member of Mensa.

The problem, Debbie says, was that "as they got bigger and stronger, they became more dangerous."

With a little laugh, she ticks off a list of offenses: They broke her jaw. They stole from her purse. They went into her closet and scissored her clothes. Debbie says she carried the internet modem with her wherever she went so they couldn't download porn (they always chose violent, misogynist sex scenes) or steal people's credit-card info. She wouldn't go to the bathroom unless Jorge was home. She watched the boys in the rearview mirror while driving lest they pull off a surprise attack.

The family relocated to the ranch outside of Gainesville. There, they could keep more therapeutic animals and be closer to relatives. Once, though, the boys set a fire at Jorge's parents' home by putting a broom on the stove. Eventually, even family members backed off.

Although they had at first resisted residential programs, Debbie and Jorge began to relent. They enrolled Matthew in a military-style academy, but he was sent home, declared a danger to officers and cadets. At one group home, Brian poured a chemical in a girl's lip gloss to burn her. They boys entered boarding schools, boot camps, and mental hospitals only to be expelled. Soon, the family ran out of options.

Home with only Debbie, the brothers hid knives and hammers inside the walls. In 2006, the parents found the word die carved under their bedroom window. "It's like they were POWs and we were their captors," Debbie laments.

Brian was the size of a man now. Debbie and Jorge longed for the days when hugging the boys in a chair was a technique that actually worked. Systems of punishments and rewards had lost their effect. The couple sometimes turned to police; Matthew alone was arrested eight times. They used the Baker Act to have the boys placed under observation in mental hospitals.

Debbie has a recurring dream. "Matthew is chasing me around the car. And I reach in my purse, and I pull out a gun and I shoot him. And then" — she swallows and looks away — "he turns into a child again."

She doesn't chuckle when she says this. She cries.

Debbie and Jorge felt close to the DCF workers who'd inspected their house and investigated their past. "During the home study, they'd ask about the most intimate details: 'How is your sex life? Oh, you're infertile? How does that feel?' It was like therapy." That these same individuals would purposely deceive them felt like "the ultimate betrayal."

The boys' therapists and their family lawyer, Lance Block, however, characterized DCF employees as well-intentioned people stuck inside a flawed system.

When Myra Zuclich, the DCF adoption worker, was deposed, she explained that she had 40 kids to see each week for an hour apiece. Normal work hours didn't even allow time for travel. For unfettered access to a copy machine, she had to work through the night.