Florida Catholic | Crisis Team

Crisis team helps community cope with family’s murder

St. Jude School community remembers Nancy Bochicchio and her daughter, Joey Bochicchio–Houser during Catholic Schools Week.

BENNET BOLTON | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 02.08.08

This memorial was erected at the school to honor the memory of Joey Bchicchio and her mother, Nancy Bochicchio.

A bronze memorial was erected at the school to honor the memory of Joey Bchicchio–Hauser and her mother, Nancy Bochicchio, who were murdered in mid–December.
LINDA REEVES | FC

BOCA RATON | Why?

When a mother and her 7-year-old daughter were found murdered in their car in a mall parking lot just before Christmas, that simple word resounded here in St. Jude School classrooms and in the homes of fellow parents and parishioners.

A little-known diocesan committee — the Critical Incident Stress Management team — moved its counselors into action within hours to help heal the psychological damage in the hearts and minds of young and old alike.

School Photo
Joey Bochicchio–Hauser was in the second grade at St. Jude School at the time of her death.

Found shot to death at Boca Raton’s Town Center mall early Dec. 13 were Nancy Bochicchio, 47, and Joey Bochicchio-Hauser, a second-grader at St. Jude School who was about to celebrate her eighth birthday. The case is unsolved.

Joey was honored at a dedication at St. Jude School Feb. 1, the last day of Catholic Schools Week. An oak tree was planted and a plaque erected alongside the new school wing to commemorate the student’s life.

But Principal Deborah Armstrong remembers hearing the news that Joey and her mother were dead and realizing she had to act.

“Early the morning after the deaths, I called for help,” Armstrong told the Florida Catholic. “I knew that this would affect not only the second-graders, but the children in all of the eight grades and their parents, and our teaching and administrative staff.”

Armstrong called Theresa Fretterd, one of the stress team founders, who is assistant principal at Cardinal Newman High School in West Palm Beach.

“She began at once to put together a group of people — members of the (Critical Incident Stress Management) team — who are guidance counselors at diocesan schools and others who are specialists at Catholic Charities,” Armstrong continued. “That afternoon, they met me and my staff to plan for the next day. I went into Joey’s classroom. A counselor stayed with them all day.”

Armstrong said she and the counselors did not tell Joey’s classmates how she was killed, though some may already have known from television news reports or the local paper or from their parents.

LINDA REEVES | FC
Deborah Armstrong, principal of St. Jude School, leads memorial ceremonies to honor one of her students.

“The counselor shadowed the children wherever they went, ready to talk with them and answer any questions they might have. The children expressed elements of fear, of loss, of helplessness. They questioned everything,” she said.

Armstrong said it was valuable that someone other than herself, the principal of the children’s school, was available to them.

“We have a few teachers who had a hard time handling this tragedy — and parents who asked us what they should tell their child or children,” she said.

She said it was important to make clear to the students that God does not cause evil things to happen — that God gives us free will and we humans can do good or we can do bad things or we can do nothing.

“The bottom line is that we have to have hope that God walks with us. That God is with us, which is what the word Emmanuel means — God with us,” she said.

Armstrong said the Catholic Schools Week memorial was a way for the school community to continue dealing with the loss, while moving forward to celebrate Joey’s life.

St. Jude students sing “This Little Light of Mine” during memorial ceremonies on the school grounds. The song was a favorite of Joey Bochicchio-Hauser.

LINDA REEVES | FC
St. Jude students sing “This Little Light of Mine” during memorial ceremonies on the school grounds. The song was a favorite of Joey Bochicchio-Hauser.

“My wish was to comfort the family and be an example to the children in my school that God’s love is eternal,” she said. “I want them to know that through all of life’s ups and downs, the God who created them will always walk with them. We have a beautiful family here at St. Jude, and I am honored to be part of it.”

Franciscan Sister Joan Dawson, diocesan superintendent of schools, explained the start and workings of the Crisis Incident Stress Management Team.

“We began this team concept back in 1985 when a dozen counselors from Catholic Charities and the parishes got together to form a team,” she said. “We have several psychologists who helped, psychologists who spend three hours a month at each of our elementary schools and three high schools.”

She said the original idea was to help students who have special needs, learning difficulties exacerbated by such problems as attention deficit disorder or the mental highs and lows of bipolar disorder. That expanded a few years later into crisis intervention stress needs. Sister Dawson herself went to St. Jude School to help out the day after the Bochicchio tragedy.

Team co-founder Fretterd said the team developed into a joint project of Catholic Charities and the guidance counselors in late 2001, right after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. “The idea was that it would be beneficial for the diocese when incidents of various kinds at various levels occur — anything that impacts a parish, a school or an entire community,” she said.

The team meets every two months to share and discuss anything that has come up in the field since the last meeting. It gets going whenever a pastor or a school principal is notified of a traumatic event that needs to be addressed — a fatal accident at a school, a fire at a parish building, a death of a major parish or school person.

The team’s mission statement is crystal clear: “Critical incidents are typically sudden, powerful events outside of the range of ordinary human experiences. Because they are so sudden and unusual, they can have a strong emotional involvement. The focus of this service is to minimize the harmful effects of these types of critical incidents, particularly in crisis or emergency situations.”

“Each situation is different, so how we respond is tailored to what the people involved need. We have an emergency list to be called in order to respond quickly,” Fretterd said.

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