It is difficult to make any sense out of people with mental illness and the irrational acts they commit.
The kid’s journals will give insights into that family. I doubt much of that information will be released to the media.
The children’s journals may be a clue to any kids that may not have survived. Investigators might see references to Sally in the earlier journals and then nothing written later. Finding out what happened to Sally would be a priority.
♬ Cadaver dogs
Doot doo doo-doo do
Cadaver dogs
Doot doo-doo doo
Cadaver dogs
Doot doo doo-doo doo
Doo-doo doo
Doo-doo doo
Doo-doo doo-doo doo doot doot doo-doo doo ♬
A psychology teacher in college told me, “Some people are just crazy”.
WTF???
Are you WTFing me or the dog song?
The dog song 
What sort of boggles the mind that crazy often finds other crazy and hook up.
It is relatively common, unfortunately, for people to seek out and find relationships with people who somehow mirror the dysfunction they were exposed to growing up.
This is a particularly egregious example, but people abused as children are more likely to seek out partners who abuse their own children. This is something I will never understand, how one person can perpetuate the cycle of abuse and the next person, in the next generation, can make the choice to break it. What is the difference between the perpetuators and the cycle breakers? I don’t know, but the question haunts me.
Bingo! I think they don’t believe they’ve done anything wrong.
**sidenote
And this is the origin of the phrase “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.” They bathed from Dad, Mom, oldest to youngest. By the time you got to baby, you couldn’t see the baby in the bath water.
Maybe the dust bowl, Oklahoma and the environs.
Ah. Sign me up, too.
They look sort of like the aliens in TOS Cat’s paw.
Now, a sister of the wife is saying that they were abused by an older male relative when they were children:
The sister also says in the same article that the couple stopped attending church around 10 years ago, started going to bars and arranging threesomes :eek::eek:
So, if their motive for keeping the kids chained up was religious, why didn’t they let them loose when they stopped going to church? Or maybe it’s easier to go to the bar or travel across the country for a threesome when your kids are chained to their beds?
We grapple to make sense of things like these, but I don’t think there is sense to be made. I know that nobody in this thread has attempted to excuse this behavior but I can see people like these monsters justifying their behavior with some sob stories. I won’t abide it. Other people suffer enormous abuse and still choose not to do harm to children.
I know I’m preaching to the choir, but damn. I’m tired of people making excuses for terrible parenting.
I hope the parents spend time in whatever hell they believe in. But I also hope there is a more practical, and secular, punishment for them.
The mother’s brother says that she wanted to get a reality tv show, just like Kate Plus 8.
You’re not really photogenic if you are dirty and starved with a bowl hair cut. I don’t think TLC would be returning the call. I am willing to bet it is fund/religious in nature. Makes me ill.
ABC said the oldest boy was attending college classes, Mom in tow. And had a perfect GPA.
This sounds like a classic case of Folie a deux–two similarly crazy people getting together and sharing the same craziness.