Parents Each Charged 4 Days Apart With Felony Child Abuse Involving Same Autistic Teen Son

Jason Joseph Reed, 42, of Raeland Lane in Palm Coast, was arrested on Oct, 21 and charged with felony child abuse following an incident captured on internal video and involving his autistic teenage stepson.

Four days later, Jason’s wife Janet Lynn Reed, 41, was arrested on an identical charge following a different incident with her son, who will be referred to here as Tom (a pseudonym). Tom was taken to the hospital after the second incident.

Jason was released on his own recognizance. Janet was released on $5,000 bond. It’s unclear why the difference. Neither had a prior record.

Both parents have been ordered to have no contact with their son pending the disposition of the case, with one exception on Oct 28, when they were both allowed to join a multi-disciplinary team meeting regarding Tom, but only electronically.

On Oct. 21, Jason told a sheriff’s deputy who’d responded to the house that Tom had been in an electronic counseling session at the dining room table but kept playing with a piece of paper without paying attention, and ignoring Jason telling him to stop. So Jason grabbed Tom’s chair, pulling him away from the table. Internal camera footage the deputy reviewed showed Tom’s chair falling and striking him as he was being pulled away, and Tom yelling. The chair left a “red scrape.” After he fell, “he screamed and raised his hands, accidentally striking Reed in the face,” the report states.

Tom told the deputy he always fidgets when he’s upset, nervous or angry, and that Jason had told him to get out of the way as he was getting ready to go to work. Tom didn’t think he was in the way.

On Oct. 25, a different deputy, Richard Stanford, began his report by referring to Tom as “known to me from numerous law enforcement encounters.” He’d been dispatched to the R-Section house in reference to what had been reported as a domestic disturbance. “Due to all the previous issues in the residence, there are surveillance cameras throughout the common areas,” the deputy reported. He requested the footage.

Janet and Tom were on the couch. Janet used an expletive to tell her son she wasn;t turning on music, then, as Tom messed with a string on the couch, used more expletives to tell him to stop. Janet “is observed continuously screaming profanities at the victim and smacking his right hand approximately 20 or more times,” Stanford reported. “The sound from the contact could be heard on the camera approximately 20 feet away. Reed continues to scream at and berate the victim for the next few seconds. She then grabs the victim and forcefully drags him from the couch to the floor where he lets out an audible ‘ouch.’”

Tom is seen trying to separate from his mother, using the couch as a barrier, but she continued to follow him, screaming at him, climbing over the couch and following him into the kitchen. “The next segment begins with Reed holding the victim against the corner of the wall before the two fell to the floor behind the couch. Only the top of Reed’s head is seen from behind the couch, but the victim is heard coughing and saying ‘ouch’ multiple times, asking Reed to get off him, and crying. The victim then gets away from Reed and runs towards the front door.”

Tom was transported by Flagler County Fire Rescue to AdventHealth Palm Coast with non-life-threatening injuries, the report states, after paramedics checked his injuries at the house. The Department of Children and Families took custody of Tom at the hospital. Janet was booked at the county jail on the child abuse charge, a third-degree felony.