He had a small group of friends and enjoyed computers, origami, animals and picking tomatoes with his grandmother, his father said. But school was difficult for him, and his weight – topping 275 before his weight loss-program – made him a target for teasing. He found comfort with even more food.
“He used to say, `Mom and Dad, I don’t want to go to school. I don’t want to deal with those people. They’re mean to me and they hurt me,'” recalled Jamie Barnhard, Ben’s father and Jensvold’s ex-husband. “It broke both of our hearts.”
The couple placed their son in the county’s special-education program, but Barnhard said his son struggled in the system. He spent about nine months at Wellspring Academies, a weight-loss boarding school in North Carolina, returning in May more than 100 pounds slimmer and more confident.
“He wanted to ride his bike. He wanted to be a kid again,” Barnhard said. “He wanted to go out and have fun. He wanted to fly airplanes with his dad. He wanted to just do anything.”
But there were still concerns about where to send Ben to school.
Jensvold appeared consumed by his education at her father’s memorial service last spring, Slaughter said. She confided that she was having trouble paying the roughly $50,000 tuition for Ben to attend Wellspring. She presented a binder about five-inches thick detailing his academic needs, along with a chart showing how his IQ had fallen over the years.
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