Short summary - twin toddlers starved to death. And were left in their room by their mother for a week. Before their 11 year old sister finally called the police.
Not sure if the quote is in the above linked story, but it has been reported that the mother said to police when questioned about how the toddlers died “I didn’t feed them enough I guess” :eek: :eek:
Un-fucking-believable. How can a mother be so (words escape me) … callous to let this happen?
I hope they throw the fucking book at these people. Their other kids will be far better off away from these so-called parents.
Nothing to say. Everyone with a heart and a mind would feel the same as you and I. There are chasms between us and the mind of the ‘mother’ in that story that cannot be crossed.
I hope the rest of her children get out of that family alive.
In the entire world as I know it, nothing is as hard to believe as a mother not caring for her children. Here in the states, we had the unbelievable case of Andrea Yates, who drowned her five kids in the bath tub.
IMO, there’s no stronger bond on earth and women killing their own children must be the ultimate in mental illness.
It’s not just the mother involved here. She and the father were ‘estranged’ but still living under the same roof (just different bedrooms apparently). There were four other kids living in the house too. How in the fucking hell did someone, anyone not realise the twins were, um, not around? How did the father live there and not notice their absence, or at least enquire as to where they might be? Never once did he check the bedroom to kiss his little-ones goodnight?
The other kids were regularly asking other neighbours for food. Another part that I find odd is that the suburb (Sunnybank Hills) is quite affluent- as in upper middle class. Obvioulsy you can get morons amongs that group but it would seem unlikely that they were on the breadline.
Andrea Yates was very much treated. She was yanked off antipsychotic meds abruptly less than a week before the murders. Her husband was told she could not be left alone with the kids, but decided to disregard that. End hijack, sorry.
Update: charges against the parents have been upgraded from “failing to provide the necessities of life” to also include charges of murder and torture.
So we have 2 18-month old children that weighed at death, about the amount that newborns weigh. (I’m American. Google says 3.6 kilos is about 7 pounds.) I’m not a mom, but from what I know children pack on weight like crazy after birth. It’s their job.
I have a friend who’s daughter died of a congenital heart defect at 14 months, and she still weighed twice that.
Dad lives in the same house but hasn’t seen the kids. The children were not allowed out of the bedroom. Bah! This seems a symptom of all kinds of screwed up.
I actually have more sympathy for Andrea Yates than these people (though I have no idea what their circumstances were…I guess I should say I’m prepared to have more sympathy for one over the others). From what I remember she’d had previous difficulties after her births, and her husband just left her alone to deal with it. Cuz y’know, that’s what women are for (in his estimation).
And it’s really a toss-up between being drowned to death quickly by the person you trust most in the whole world and being left to starve over time.
Poor little mites. All of them.
(And sorry, I just realized I’d furthered the Yates hijack and I didn’t mean to.)
My money is on this being a similar story. They had four kids already, Mum struggling to cope, then twins (very stressful) then Dad is estranged (ie leaves her alone to deal), she can’t cope. She’ll be playing a mental breakdown card, is my guess. And quite possibly with at least as much credibility as others have in the past.
Yep - my daughter weighed 3.35kg (7lb 6oz) when she was born. She is 15 months old now and weighs about 13kg (nearly 29lb), so those kids must have been starved for a long time. I think the mother admitted that she was only giving them milk, so the poor little things had probably been wasting away for a good 12 months (since they should have been started on solids at 6 months).
I’ve been thinking about this awful case all day today, and the only conclusion I can come to is that it is really a ‘sign of the times’.
Once upon a time, when the extended family was more intact than it is nowadays, when mums were facing crises of either a psychological or practical nature, then aunts and uncles and grandmothers and grandfathers were around to:
a) Notice the changes in the attitude/behaviour of the mother and
b) Notice the changes in the appearance/behaviour of the children and would either:
a) Step in to offer assistance to the mum to help her cope with the day to day stuff involved with caring for a young family or:
b) Notify someone like the local family doctor that things were not OK and a home visit would be necessary.
Something must have gone very wrong in this family for a whole network to not notice that two wee toddlers were being severely malnourished AND (allegedly) possibly abused AND to have been dead for over a week before their tiny decomposing bodies were discovered…by an 11yr old sister who was worried about the terrible stink emanating from their bedroom. What fucken nightmares is THAT little girl going to have for the rest of her life??
IOW, there’s a lot of blame to go 'round here. No normal mother wants her children to die: it’s sort of a biological imperative thing really. It sounds like mum here was pretty fucked up, but no-one noticed or cared to take the time to notice: in which case, it’s an indictment upon all of the family and a wake-up call for the rest of us to sit up and TAKE NOTICE when a new mum is behaving weirdly.
I’ll save an even bigger rant for the father another time. :rolleyes:
I guess that the only redeeming feature is that there are two fewer potential gene-dispensers from this fucked up family to perpetuate the species. What a sad, sad event. I don’t wish evil upon any of the players, really, I just hope that we can salvage our humanity and our concern for each other to TAKE NOTICE when things are going awry with someone we know and/or care about.
Kambucta, the authorities need to take some blame here. For so long they have always said “It wasn’t reported”- that the Govt underfunds the program chronically is a nightmare. I am not shifting blame from the parents whose responsibility it is- but we are not a country where this should happen.
I agree that this is a country where this SHOULD not happen. But the authorities can only ‘take the blame’ insofar as there was ever a report made to them…and from all accounts, there was not.
This a more ‘local’ problem in that the immediate and extended family and then the neighbours and friends should have fucking noticed something was not quite right. I mean, how many mums in your experience lock toddlers away in the bedroom? For fucks sake, for your average normal mother, toddlerhood (whilst aggravating) is the time when you rejoice in your childs’ development and accomplishments! For dad, and grandma/grandpa and the bigger kids to not even get to see these littlies for weeks and months on end…what the fuck went wrong?? And why didn’t they ark up…my experience with older kids and younger babies is that the older ones are frigging DEVOTED to the littlies, and will annoy you non-stop if they think you’re being negligent (ie: not changing a wet nappie within 2.0 nanoseconds of urination, just as an example).
I think this case should be a wake-up call to ALL of us to start taking some care.
If true, there’s a great parent for you!