Mother Defends Her Son : Violence: She says Raymond Butler, accused in the fatal carjacking of two Japanese students, is troubled but innocent. She believes ‘the system’ has failed him.

As he headed for the courtroom last week, Raymond Oscar Butler, who is accused of killing two young students from Japan, had only one comment for reporters: “Go easy on my parents, all right?”

In an interview, his mother said she was not surprised that her 18-year-old son was concerned about his family.

Donna Butler, 41, described her son as a young man who gladly helps care for his brother’s infant daughters and said he did not commit the murders, which have attracted international attention.

“My son is innocent,” she said.

Butler said “the system” had failed her son, who she said has suffered from suicidal tendencies, alcohol addiction, learning disabilities and asthma. The Los Angeles County Probation Department, school officials and medical personnel who have dealt with Raymond Butler said they could not comment on his background because of confidentiality laws.

The picture that emerges from his mother’s description is that of a nearly illiterate family that found tensions in its mixed ethnic identity--Raymond Butler is of white, Mexican and black descent--and was ill-equipped to deal with Raymond’s problems.

Donna Butler, who lives in the Rancho San Pedro public housing project, says she does not understand all the attention focused on the death of the two students. “You don’t know how many times there are bullets flying here. I raised my kids in it. Nobody is protecting us.

“(Of course), it’s a big thing when (any) child is murdered, but why use my son as an example when kids get killed all over?”

She said her son often baby-sat for the infant daughters of the brother with whom he was living in San Pedro, not far from her home. “He would bathe his niece and make formula and change diapers,” said Butler. “He was better than any woman.”

However, she said her son suffered emotional problems. When he was 17, he tried to commit suicide by drinking two bottles of liquor, she said. He was committed to a psychiatric hospital for 72 hours, and then discharged.

“I said he needs more than 72 hours. At the hospital I begged them to keep him there,” Butler said. She does not know why her son tried to commit suicide, Butler said. After the incident, she said he did not get psychiatric counseling.

There appears to be some tension over ethnic identity in the family, neighbors said. Raymond Butler’s mother is of white and Mexican descent and his father is black.

Donna Butler said she told her son, “I don’t want you with black girls. They’re constantly fighting and having all these babies and I don’t like that.” But Butler insisted, “I’m not prejudiced--I (was) married to a black man.”

Her son harbored no ill feelings toward Asians, his mother said. “I have never heard Raymond say bad things about . . . Japanese or Orientals.”

But Raymond’s mixed background caused him problems, she said: “The blacks were against him, the Mexicans were against him, the whites were against him.”

Butler said her son suffered from asthma and has had to take steroids and other medications since childhood. He sometimes has to use a machine to aid his breathing at home as often as four times a day, she said. She added that the medications he was taking and food allergies caused behavioral problems as he was growing up, as did his inability to play actively with other children.

“He never had (physical education) in junior high or high school. (He wasn’t) allowed to ride bikes or skateboards, but he’d sneak off and do it and get sick.”

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Donna Butler said that her son reads at perhaps a sixth-grade level. She and her son’s father, she said, have only rudimentary reading skills.

Butler said that because she is unable to read effectively, she feels lost in the legal system, as she has in the past in trying to deal with her son’s health and educational problems. “I don’t know how to read or write. I don’t know where to begin.”

Butler said that although she and Raymond’s father, Charles Butler, 61, are divorced, he has always been in close contact with his sons. Charles Butler, a former security guard, is now on disability. Donna Butler says she does not work because of health problems but collects Social Security.

She said her son dropped out of San Pedro High School and later attended Angel’s Gate continuation school, but later dropped out there, too. After serving jail time for burglary, she said, he was not allowed to go back to the school.

Although police say he is a gang member, Donna Butler said he is not. She also says that although he pleaded no contest to burglary last year, he was not guilty. Butler said that the evening the students were shot, her son dropped by her apartment with his sister-in-law and niece and a young female friend.

From Sunday through Wednesday after the March 25 shooting, he spent much of each day at the Kaiser Carson Medical Office Building in a substance abuse rehabilitation program, she said.

Last Wednesday, when police pulled over her car and arrested her son, Butler said she did not know what it was for.

“I wanted to keep tabs on my child. I wanted to help him,” she said. “The system didn’t work right.”