"Raheem told authorities the dead boy was his twin brother Faheem, but a positive identification had not been made because of the body’s deteriorated condition, James said. Autopsy results were pending.
"“The room was a nightmare, feces, you name it … vomiting, all the ills that you’d think from two boys ages 7 and 5 having been locked in a room without any care or any treatment,” James said. “There’s a clear pattern of neglect.”
“Sherry Murphy, who was to have been looking after the boys while the mother was in jail, was being sought on child endangerment charges, James said.”
This person is not worth the time it would take to compose a rant the strength of ether.
I thought this was going to be a rant about this case, but apparently it’s going around. There was even a vigil outside their church today to support them.
Poor kids. ANY random stranger would have treated these kids better. Just HAND THEM to someone and run away. They won’t have to die like animals, and they’ll thank you for it later (not likely).
The case linked to in the OP seems like the sort of thing that may have grizzly details forthcoming. I just hope the press and the court can stifle their desire to know too many details, I’m not sure those kids can handle having to relive something like that. Whether the woman ever faces justice is less important now than making sure those kids recover from the trauma and grow into normal young men.
These cases are, to me, the most horrible murders I could hear about. Because they involve a victim who has done nothing wrong and is tortured by the person(s) they trust the most.
Nearly five years ago, one of these kids was far too close to my own home and I still can’t understand why it happened. Her father tried to get custody of her. He went through the appropriate legal channels, Washington County Children and Youth Services. They investigated, and nothing was done.
I find it hard to imagine they didn’t notice that a 7 year old girl weighed less than 12 pounds. Maybe it’s because everyone who should’ve been looking out for her, everyone but her dad, failed that girl that I remember the name [url=http://www.post-gazette.com/soundscene/pages/20010406montgomery08.asp]Tausha Lanham** after almost 5 years.
These stories are all very horrible and sad. My heart goes out to all those poor children who had to suffer through all that abuse.
It makes me wonder…what on Earth would cause a parent or guardian to abuse innocent children like that? It makes me absolutely sick.
There’s a book I’ve seen on the shelves at bookstores. It’s a true story of a child who suffered through horrible neglect and abuse, but managed to survive. I’m not sure, but I think the title is “A Child Called It”. Sorry, I don’t know of a cite or an author. Has anyone read it?
I wish there were a different answer, but in many cases the parent or guardian simply doesn’t care.
Then there are the cases where the parent says “This ss my child, so I will raise him/her/it however I like”. And you get some remarkable displays of “Holy Hell, I didn’t think that was possible”.
It has to be more than not caring to inflict horrible abuse like that. There’s a lot of people and things I don’t care for in this world but you don’t see me doing anything like that. No, it’s more than not caring, it’s evil concentrated.
When I read this story (the Newark one) in the paper last night, I had to seriously rethink my hard-core stance on reporting child neglect, especially on a suspicion alone. If someone in this case had been aware of something being not quite right, it could have saved that little boy’s life, and saved his two brothers a load of horror. But, I think in this case, no one could have possibly even suspected anything. According to the NYTimes, neighbors did not even know that children “lived” (if you can call it that) in that house, and they weren’t enrolled in school at all. Very sad.
On another note, SpasticKitty, the book you mention (the author is one Dave Pelzer) must be taken with a grain of salt. There has been some controversy about its (and the author’s) credibility.
Really? That’s interesting. I read the book a while ago – it was compelling, but not as good as I expected it to be. Where’s the controversy come from?
Suspenderzzz, in the NY Post today there’s an article resulting from an interview with the peoples’ relatives - apparently the relatives knew what was going on and didn’t do anything about it. :mad:
Either that, or they didn’t know anything and they’re making shit up to glorify themselves in the newspaper.
Take what you read in The New York Post with a grain of salt.
The family and perfect strangers too, for that matter called child services in New Jersey. It has come to light that child services had a file on them for years.
The last thing in the file was a report of the children being beaten and burned. The case worker went to visit the family and could not find the children, so she closed the case. That’s right-- she closed the case without ever seeing the kids because they could not be found.
Now, before there is a rush to judgement on the case worker, she had a load of over 100 cases-- even when the state itself says max case load should be about 30. What she did was not against the rules, in fact closed cases are good. New Jersey has called the conditions in the dept of family services an “emergency” and have changed the rules effective immediatly. They have also fired the case worker’s supervisor and suspended the case worker.
Yeah, closing the barn door after the horse has bolted.
My teenage son, who has more common sense than many adults (sometimes) and I were discussing this case just this morning. He surprised me by pointing out exactly what I’ve been thinking all along: The reason the social workers et al are so bogged down is because the bulk of their work load consists of bullshit cases. Bingo.
In my humble estimation, 90% of what the child abuse authorities deal with is a bullshit case of some sort (as detailed in an earlier thread on the subject). This is why the real instances of child abuse fall through the cracks. This zero tolerance shit causes more harm than good by treating every report equally, instead of using judgment and attaching varying degrees of urgency to reported cases.
As always, the harder we try to plug every possible hole, the more likely the real problems are to slip through. Same goes for airport security and zero tolerance in schools. On the latter, while principals were busy patting themselves on the back for confiscating nail clippers and sending students to drug rehab for taking an Aspirin in school, the Columbine psychos all the while were building their arsenal, quietly and undetectedly.
Where were the child abuse authorities while these kids in Newark were suffering? Probably busy giving someone a hard time for a bruise their kid had sustained on the playground. Give me a break, people, the world’s officially gone nuts.
