The Office of the Child Advocate report identified missed opportunities to provide more appropriate
treatment for Lanza, whose social isolation and obsession with mass killings have been detailed in
police reports that concluded the motive for the shootings may never be known.

A thread running through the 114-page report, which refers to Lanza as "AL," is the effort on
the part of his parents to accommodate his disabilities, rather than adhering to specialists’
recommendations for extensive special education support.

"Both AL’s mother and his educational team shared a goal of managing and accommodating, rather than
securing treatment for, AL’s disabilities, and likely this approach was fueled by a lack of critical
information and guidance," the report said.

In the three months before the massacre, Lanza had not left his room in his mother’s spacious
colonial-style house, where he lived surrounded by an arsenal of weapons and spent long hours playing
violent video games. His parents were divorced, and Lanza had not seen his father for two years. The
report said Lanza’s severe and deteriorating mental health problems, combined with a preoccupation with
violence and access to deadly weapons, proved a recipe for mass murder.

The report also provocatively asks whether a family that was not white or as affluent as the Lanzas would
have been given the same leeway to manage treatment for their troubled child.

"Is the community more reluctant to intervene and more likely to provide deference to the parental
judgment and decision-making of white, affluent parents than those caregivers who are poor or
minority?" the report said.

Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, then shot his way into the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012, and
gunned down 20 children and six educators before committing suicide.

The advocate’s office investigates all child deaths in the state for lessons on prevention. The authors
of the Newtown report said it aims to reinforce the importance of effective mental health treatment and
communication among professionals charged with the care for children.

"Records indicate that the school system cared about AL’s success but also unwittingly enabled Mrs.
Lanza’s preference to accommodate and appease AL through the educational plan’s lack of attention to
social-emotional support, failure to provide related services, and agreement to AL’s plan of independent
study and early graduation at age 17," the authors wrote.

The authors said they could not say whether more effective treatment could have prevented the tragedy.

"This report raises, but cannot definitively answer, the question as to whether better access to
effective mental health and educational services would have prevented the tragic events at Sandy
Hook," they wrote.

The police investigation into the massacre concluded more than a year ago with prosecutors saying that a
motive might never be known. It said Lanza was afflicted with mental health problems, but despite his
dark interests, he did not display aggressive or threatening tendencies.

Documents released by police in December 2013 included descriptions of sporadic treatment for his mental
health troubles. At one point, experts at the Yale Child Studies Center prescribed
antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication, but Nancy Lanza discontinued the treatment and never scheduled
follow-up visits, police reports said.

A Connecticut judge last year ordered Newtown school officials to give Lanza’s records the Office of
Child Advocate for its investigation. The governor’s Sandy Hook Advisory Commission has been waiting for
the office’s report before releasing its recommendations on what the state can do to prevent and respond
to future mass killings.

Child Advocate Sarah H. Eagan already has met with the families of the victims and Newtown school
officials to discuss the findings.