Paul Barreto：The Son Who Couldn’t Leave

Paul Barreto moved into Room 2565 at the New Yorker Hotel a year after his father, Mickey Barreto, did. It was 2019, and the 135-square-foot queen-bed room in Midtown Manhattan seemed like it could be a better place to live—or at least a safer one.https://wordpress.com/

It was a far cry from Paul’s previous living situation in California with his mother. There were no mice scurrying around, no fights breaking out outside his window, and no strangers showing up at odd hours. At the hotel, Paul had the bed to himself, while his father slept on the floor with his boyfriend, Matthew Hannan.

For the first time in years, Paul was attending school regularly. His father had started homeschooling him and his older brother, Jason, when Paul was in third grade. But there was no structured curriculum. Most of the time, Paul said, he just watched YouTube videos.

Now, at last, Paul was making friends at school and hanging out with them after class—something his parents had never allowed before.

However, things soon began to unravel, as they often did with his father, a man prone to delusions, quick temper, and a fascination with conspiracy theories. Over the years, Paul had learned to ignore his father’s rants and avoid his anger. But in the cramped hotel room, he felt trapped.

Before Paul moved in, his father had already started a legal battle with the hotel’s owners. Initially, Mr. Barreto took them to housing court, arguing that a little-known New York City rent law could make Room 2565 his permanent residence. He won the case.

Mr. Barreto paid $200.57 for his first night and never paid another dime for the next five years.

The entire hotel was his, Mr. Barreto would insist, convinced that the court ruling meant he owned the New Yorker. In interviews later, Paul recalled trying to explain to his father that he didn’t own the hotel and would get into trouble if he continued with his delusions.

But Mr. Barreto filed a deed with New York City, and once it was accepted, he claimed to be the legal owner, even demanding that the hotel’s diner send rent payments to his room. The hotel was eventually returned to its rightful owner, and authorities warned Mr. Barreto not to file another deed. But he did it again.

Meanwhile, Paul’s life was falling apart. He shuttled back and forth between New York and California, where his mother would smoke crack in front of him.

Paul missed much of the 2020-21 school year and returned to New York in the spring of 2021, but he wasn’t re-enrolled in school.

However, Paul still had friends in the city, and the more time he spent with them, the more he realized how abnormal his upbringing had been. Their homes were filled with books, their parents were attentive, and they watched children’s movies instead of R-rated ones.

As Paul started opening up to his friends and their parents about his life at the hotel, one family grew concerned and reported the situation to the city’s Administration for Children’s Services (ACS), the agency that investigates child abuse and neglect.

ACS tried repeatedly to reach Paul’s father, but Mr. Barreto refused to let them inside. As the agency pushed for a meeting, Mr. Barreto suddenly declared in September 2021 that they were flying to California the next day.

Paul realized that if they left for California, his case with ACS would be delayed for another year. “I couldn’t wait another year,” he said. “I had to do something now.”

That night, his father slept against the front door to block anyone from leaving. But the next morning, while his father was distracted, Paul managed to escape.

For three days, Paul hid in Central Park, charging his phone at sidewalk kiosks and sneaking back into their old apartment building after midnight to sleep in a stairwell.

He eventually went to a local police station and asked to be taken to a children’s shelter. But when the police learned that Mr. Barreto had filed a missing persons report, they returned Paul to his father.

Two days later, determined to leave again, Paul slipped out with nothing but the clothes on his back and made his way to a friend’s apartment near Central Park.

He told his friend, Jack Ryan, that he was afraid to go home. Jack rushed to tell his mother.

“Paul looked pale and disheveled,” Jennifer Ryan, Jack’s mother, recalled. “He told me his parents had abused him.”

Though she had only met Paul briefly before, Ms. Ryan promised him that he wouldn’t leave. “You’re not going anywhere,” she said.

The next day, Ms. Ryan made pancakes for the boys and called ACS, which was already aware of Paul’s case. By the afternoon, caseworkers had approved Ms. Ryan as Paul’s foster mother.

The following week, Ms. Ryan enrolled Paul in ninth grade at the High School for Climate Justice on the Upper East Side. She bought him new clothes, toiletries, and arranged for all the vaccinations he had missed as a child.

At 15, Paul was still unfamiliar with basic life skills. He didn’t know how to clean up after himself, what a thermometer was for, or that he didn’t have to sleep in his clothes. But Ms. Ryan was impressed by his advanced vocabulary, far beyond what one would expect for someone his age.

She plans to formally adopt Paul once his family court case is resolved.

“I feel incredibly lucky, like one in a trillion,” Paul said recently, sitting at a Starbucks in Manhattan after school. With tousled dark hair, he spoke matter-of-factly about his tumultuous upbringing, often joking about the many hotels he had lived in during his nomadic childhood.

“It’s just jarring sometimes,” he said, “going from that to this.”

In February, Paul’s father was charged with 24 counts, including 14 felony fraud charges, related to his scheme to claim ownership of the New Yorker. Initially released on his own recognizance, he was later taken into custody in November and placed in a cell at Rikers Island. His trial has been postponed after he was deemed mentally unfit to stand.

Psychiatrists evaluated Mr. Barreto, diagnosing him with a delusional disorder and symptoms of schizophrenia. He also admitted to abusing crystal meth.

Mr. Barreto was transferred to a state mental hospital last week.

In a phone interview from the hospital, he denied ever assaulting Paul, claiming his son’s memories were fabricated.

He also defended his parenting, calling his homemade school “one of the best you could ever find.” He pointed out that Paul had once played the role of Steve Jobs’s son in the 2013 movie Jobs.

Mr. Barreto also insisted he had been “winning” the family court case until Paul testified under cross-examination that his father had hit him.

But Mr. Barreto said, “I don’t want him back.”

Paul’s mother, Yvette Barreto, admitted in a recent interview that she verbally abused Paul, and that his father often hit him.

Earlier this month, Ms. Barreto, who lives in a shelter in California with her other son, called Paul for the first time in three years to apologize.

“I told him I was sorry and asked him to forgive me,” Ms. Barreto said. “I feel like I failed my kids.”

Now 18, Paul is set to graduate in June from LaGuardia High School, an elite performing arts school in Manhattan. After picking up the double bass in ninth grade and taking just 11 lessons, he auditioned for and was accepted into the school’s music program.

He earned a chair in its philharmonic orchestra, and also secured a spot at a competitive music training program at the Juilliard School.

At the beginning of this school year, Paul set a goal to master the first movement of Giovanni Bottesini’s Concerto No. 2, a challenging piece often performed by college students in auditions for master’s degree programs.

Lubima G. Kalinkova-Shentov, his double-bass teacher at Juilliard, said Paul was on track to perform it next year.

“I’ve never had a student who has learned so much in such a short time,” said Ms. Kalinkova-Shentov, who has taught for 25 years. “Paul has the potential to be a professional musician.”

Paul has applied to top music conservatories and plans to apply to several Ivy League universities.