Why is Maggie sent to stay with Fred in the novel, Wildoak?

To avoid reading aloud in school, Maggie stabs herself in the hand with a pencil. The school nurse stitches up the wound and says it is terrible that a childlike Maggie is in class with proper children. Faced with the need to move Maggie from yet another school, her father Vincent wants to send Maggie to Granville Place, an institution with a terrible reputation of abuse and neglect. Maggie's mother Evelyn has another option. Maggie will spend a few weeks with her maternal grandfather, a man Maggie calls Fred.