Mother admits to falsifying high IQ claims

DENVER -- A mother whose son scored 298 on an IQ test at age 6 now admits she rigged the results and falsified other records that helped him gain renown as a boy genius.

Elizabeth Chapman, 29, hospitalized her son Justin in November after what she feared was a suicide attempt. She said she decided to tell the truth because her lies were hurting the boy, who is now 8, and that she wants to be reunited with him.

Chapman confessed to faking the results after the Rocky Mountain News reported on the boy's hospitalization and began investigating his mother's claims about the intelligence tests.

"I didn't plan on it," she told The New York Times for a story in Saturday's editions. "It just happened, and I let things get out of control."

After she took Justin to the hospital, Broomfield County removed the boy from his mother's care and charged her with neglect. A trial was set for March 18.

Chapman, who moved to Broomfield with Justin from New York last summer, told the News she faked documents because they "opened a lot of doors for Justin."

Chapman has an unlisted telephone number and could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Justin enrolled in an online high school when he was 5, took classes at the University of Rochester when he was 6, and was featured in a BBC documentary about child geniuses. He met with New York Gov. George Pataki and spoke at conferences about the needs of very gifted children.

In a report published Feb. 13, the News examined a long list of Justin's purported accomplishments, including a perfect 800 on the math section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test, a genius score at age 3 on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale test, and an IQ score of 298-plus on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale, which he received at age 6.

The latter test was administered by Linda Silverman of the private Gifted Development Center in Denver. She described Justin "as the greatest genius to ever grace the earth."

Chapman told the News she had checked out a copy of the Stanford-Binet IQ test booklet and researched it with her son before Silverman administered the test. She told the Times that Justin himself had found the manual for the test in the University of Rochester library and memorized the answers.

The Times quoted her as saying she told Justin, "When you take the test, make sure you don't say the full answers and make some mistakes."