Kaylee Gain’s father admits her childhood affected by drugs

The St. Louis teen nearly died after a viral after-school sexual assault and had a childhood marked by drugs, dysfunction and mental instability, her father said in an exclusive interview with The Post this week. Admitted.

Speaking out for the first time, Clinton Gein said that Caylee’s mother, April Nordstrom, also struggled with drug addiction when she was younger, and that Caylee suffered greatly from it.

Kaylee’s parents divorced when she was five years old, and Kaylee and her younger brother lived with Nordstrom. Clinton has since recovered, but she said her troubled mother raised her baby in the throes of her addiction.

The family’s plight was so dire that when Caylee was eight years old, the children were sent to live with their grandparents for two years.

By that point, Mr. Clinton said, he had rehabilitated, remarried and maintained steady employment. Kaylie and her younger brother went to live with him and his new spouse, Jamie Gane, and they lived together for five years.

“She was a normal child,” her father said. “We tried to give them stability and structure.”

Jamie said Caylee naturally had a hard time accepting her stepmother at times. But overall, there were few major disruptions in these years.

“She was just a little girl,” she said. “She played with Barbie dolls and dolls.”

But as Kaylee entered her teens, she began to miss her mother and urged her father to move back in with her at Nordstrom.

“She was becoming a young woman,” he said. “She said she needed her mother, and by that time April was in good shape. She was working and doing well.”

Kaylee’s father agreed to the arrangement with some hesitation, but soon came to regret the decision.

He said his daughter started having problems at school and was getting into arguments on a daily basis.

“I don’t know who started things, whether it was her or someone else,” Jamie said. “But there were also problems.”

Nordstrom relayed alarming reports from school administrators and teachers, but with few details. Mr. Clinton said he encouraged teachers to reach out and alert them of any problems, but they lacked communication skills.

“She doesn’t have that system anymore,” Clinton said. “What we tried to tell her was never reinforced by her mother. We didn’t have this problem until a few years ago.”

April Nordstrom could not be reached, and the Gein family’s attorney, Brian Kemmerer, declined to comment when contacted by the Post.

Although Mr. Clinton maintained a friendly and supportive relationship with Mr. Nordstrom, Ms. Cayley’s mother said she had trouble containing her daughter’s teenage rebellion.

The boy’s father said he tried to persuade Kayley to return to his home, but the boy, who had become increasingly reticent, resisted, fearing a more restrictive environment.

Her father sensed his daughter’s slow spiral but didn’t realize the extent of it until a video of her head slamming into concrete and convulsing on the ground went viral on social media. .

A crying Nordstrom first contacted Jamie on March 8, after the fight, to tell him Caylee had been seriously injured at school.

The stepmother immediately drove to the hospital and called Mr. Clinton.

“When I first came to the hospital, I was nervous and worried,” he says. “But when I found out this was due to a fight, I was angry because I felt this could have been prevented.”

A long-running feud between Gein and school rival Monice Decroux, 15, finally escalated into violence last month, with both sides arguing about a mile away from Hazelwood East HS near St. Louis. agreed to resolve the differences.

Decroux, described by his family as a straight-A student, gained the upper hand during the scuffle and repeatedly slammed Gein’s head against the pavement.