When No One Listens
Review by Kim Cantrell
Jason Bautista and his younger brother Matthew Montejo suffered a horrific childhood growing up with their mother, Jane Bautista, who suffered from a severe mental illness. Despite her constant moving, confessions to the boys’ coaches, teachers, and others in mandatory reporting positions that “celebrities” who were angry with her were out to get her, and Jane’s strange behavior observed by neighbors, no one ever reported her for what was obliviously a mental disturbance. Even Jane’s own family ignored her illness, instead sending a check every month; never once taking into consideration what terror her two young sons could be living in.
After twenty years, Jason could no longer take it. He’d tried to move away, but his mother begged and threatened, and told him he was like everyone else who had ever deserted her. Coupled with his worry for the safety and welfare of his little brother, Jason would return home. Rinse and repeat, or so the cycle went several times.
Somewhere, somehow it had to end though. How long can a person live with like Jason and Matthew did?
For years the boys and their mother, in their own ways, had been crying out for help, for someone to intervene. But in January 2003, Jason realized no one was listening.
Only he could set them all free.
Author Tina Dirmann in her book Such Good Boys, gives an insightful, heartbreaking view, without bias, into life with a paranoid schizophrenic mother that led to a young man with so much potential but became so desperate he threw it all away because he could take no more.
I am shocked, appalled, and embarrassed that in 21st century America, with its mandatory reporting and ease of access to mental health care, a young man can suffer a double betrayal by the system that swears to “protect.” How dare we, as a society, ignore the problem then judge a victim’s solution?!
If there is one downside to this book, it would be that it was written by a newspaper reporter and, therefore, can, at times, be as repetitive as news articles are prone to be as a case carries on for any length of time.
That one small complaint aside… Such Good Boys was such an excellent read that I completed the book within less than 24 hours. I simply could not put it down!
Definitely a must read for the true crime lover.
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UPDATES FROM THIS BOOK:
Jason Bautista is currently an inmate at the Ironwood State Prison in Blythe, California. The current whereabouts of his brother, Matthew Montejo, are unknown.
