Parents Behaving Badly

Police: Conn. mom left kids in car while tanning:

28-year-old Candy Ann Rock (really?) of Enfield, Connecticut (see what I mean) has been arrested for leaving her two kids, ages 3 and 1, in a freezing car. The local temp was 28F and the kids were in the car for 18 minutes.

The ironic part is ‘Mom’ was inside the tanning salon getting her melanoma on.

Basic parenting principle applies again. If you can’t get someone to watch your kids. Don’t go.

I wonder if she didn’t want to look pale while up on the main stage.

Thanks to Jennifer for the tip.

Police: Parents Withheld Food From Children:

It seems that Connecticut is battling Oklahoma for the “favorite” state of PBB. Maybe we should start a rating system ala News of Doom style.

This time we go to Montville, Connecticut where a Breeder and Step-Breeder have been arrested. Christine (breeder) and John Berkery (Step-Breeder) have been arrested for depriving the two children in the house of food and various other neglect charges.

Police say the couple rationed food for the 14 and 1-year-old girls. They were turned in by the girls’ aunt who said…

“Christine and John started locking up the more expensive food and snacks. Only canned foods were left out for them. They were only given specific time periods that they could eat.”

And it just wouldn’t be a story without feces wouldn’t it. Not animal this time however the 14-year-old allegedly told police that she once found the 1-year-old in an overflowing diaper playing with her own feces.

Again with these stories they should report what kind of electronic equipment was in the house and how much alcohol was in the fridge.

And again I’m always amazed that the universe is so bent that two abusers like this could find each other.

Thanks to Bridget for the tip.

Toddler found wandering in the cold
Mom & boyfriend face charges:

With the recent spate of bitter cold weather that most of the country has been experiencing most people are bundling up there kids and making sure they’re safe out in the snow. Not 22-year-old Kristin Patraw and her main man Rudolph McNeil. They are accused of letting Patraw’s 21-month-old daughter out of their site where she wandered barefoot into the snow in Waterbury, Connecticut. The temperature at the time was 27 F.

Patraw reportedly left her daughter with her grandmother on New Year’s Eve. At some point the grandmother left the child with Patraw’s boyfriend because she had to go to work.

When police found McNeil they say he was asleep with a bottle of vodka by his side. Patraw allegedly went to grandma’s house to get the baby but when she wasn’t there she went back to sleep.

Police also say that living conditions were deplorable and yes there were animal feces.

Thanks to LadyJade for the tip.

Marijuana found growing in baby’s bedroom, 4 arrested during raid in Putnam:

Police in Putnam, Conn. have arrested 4 after finding an extensive marijuana operation inside a residence yesterday. Not only did police find large amounts of weed but also a fake handgun made to look like a real one, some cash and a grow operation. And did I mention that the plants were growing in the bedroom of an infant.

Those arrested were Andres Pagan, 20, and Kristi King, 25, who were the main tenants of the residence. I’m going to assume that one or both of them were the Breeders. Also arrested were Carlos Maldonado, 21, and Luis M. Santiago Jr., 22.

No matter what your feelings on weed are it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still illegal and if you get caught with it there’s a damn good chance that you could lose your kids over it.

Salon owner faces drug, weapons charges:

25-year-old Carlton Crooks of Bridgeport, Conn runs a hair salon. That may be just a side gig after his lucrative career as a crack dealer.

Crooks (apt name) and his girlfriend, 23-year-old Emily Rios, have been arrested for srug dealing and having a cache of illegal weapons in reach of their kids.

Officers then searched his apartment — where he lived with Rios and their son — where they found a loaded MAC 11 assault weapon, two handguns, $5,200 in a safe, packaging materials several ounces of cocaine and crack cocaine.

“All three firearms were found fully loaded with a round in the chamber, not secured with gun locks and easily accessible by anyone in the apartment,” police said.

It’s a good thing that Crooks and Rios have been arrested now as I’m sure we would have read about them in the future with their son either accidentally shooting himself or ingesting the crack. At least this way the kids has half a chance.

Thanks to Heather for the tip.

Woman Accused Of Drunken Breast-Feeding:

36-year-old Allanah Earley of Durham, Conn. was arrested for risk of injury to a minor. That minor would be her 3-week-old baby. The risk of injury would be is that she was breastfeeding the baby while 7 sheets to the wind. I know the saying is three sheets but after you get the details you’ll realize why I said 7.

She was at a bar and had her 3-week-old baby with her. She had seven drinks while she was there. Then she wandered out into the cold Connecticut night with her baby. She went to a friends house and had more alcohol. While still intoxicated she breast fed her baby.

When police finally caught up with her she could hardly stand and was combative with officers. She should consider herself lucky that she wasn’t Tasered.

By the time I was 36, which was only 4 short years ago. I had long outgtrown my going out to a bar and getting plastered phase. One time I went out to a bar and a couple of beers and when I got home my daughter said I smelled like beer. I was so freakin’ ashamed. I guess some people refuse to grow up even at the risk of their own children.

Thanks to LadyJade for the tip.

Being a bad parent is hard, yo! When you choose to neglect your kids, it forces you to make all kinds of difficult choices. Let’s say – strictly as a hypothetical, mind you – that you and your daughter decided to leave her kids home overnight and part of the next morning, so that you can go out and, I don’t know, snort coke off of the ballsacks of male strippers. (I’m not hip to what all the cool bad parents do for fun these days.) Your grandkids’ ages range from 7 to 11, so you know that none of them should be left to look after the others. Then the 11-year-old calls you in a panic. There’s a fire! In the house! What do we DO?!

Now, you already know that you’re a bad ma and grandma. You should’ve already coached the kids on what to do in case of a fire: get out of the house and call 911 from a neighbor’s. You ponder telling the little welp to do just that…but then you stop. If you or they call 911, then everybody will find out that you’re shitty caregivers! The HORROR! So instead, you tell the kids just to chill in the burning house until their mos gets back – so that, you know, she can make sure it’s a raging inferno, and not just a little pan-fire that she can smother with her ginormous ass. But you probably end up feeling guilty about that so, 18 minutes after the boy calls, you reluctantly dial up 911.

Oh….wait. You mean this ISN’T a hypothetical? Edwina Naholnik of Waterford, Connecticut actually told her daughter’s kids to do just that?! Huh. And here I thought I was concocting one of those “lifeboat dilemmas”.

Don’t worry – the kids are just fine. The house burned to the ground, though, and the fire killed all their pets. And the Naholnik elders have been brought up on charges, just as grandma feared they would. I wonder if 29-year-old mom Brandi tried to convince the kids to lie to the authorities once they arrived, and the kids ratted her out in the hopes of getting new parents from the state. One can only hope. Obviously, the parents that God gave these kids weren’t quite up to snuff.

(Hat tip: Marcia)

Yesterday, we all gaped in awed terror at the revelations surrounding Jonathon Edington. Edington had murdered his neighbor Barry James after Edington’s 2-year-old daughter seemed to accuse James of sexual molestation. But police say that they are certain that no molestation ever occurred. My opinion piece on this case was featured on the social bookmarking site Reddit, where it sparked a furious discussion on vigilante justice. What’s amazing about the thread is that some people are still defending Edington’s use of vigilante justice against James.

One flagrantly irrational user, jjsonp, insists that the cops may well be manufacturing a picture of innocence for Barry James in order to gain a conviction against Edington. When I pointed out to him that the police wouldn’t call themselves “confident” that this incident never happened without strong evidence, the user replied, “bullshit. the cops make false statements all the time. how many ‘terrorist’ cases have we had in the past year where we heard all the ’solid evidence’ law enforcement had, only to see those cases evaporate?” Nice fear-mongering, dude (or dudette). If you have specific evidence of police corruption in this case, I’m sure the FBI would love to hear it. Otherwise, don’t insult all of the brave men and women in our nation’s police forces, who put their lvies on the line for minimal pay so that your sorry ass can live in peace and comfort.

Most users were much more rational. In response to the accusation that police make shut up, user asbjxrn retorted, “I think the moral of this story is that so do 2 year olds.” And user pstuart provided direct evidence of how active a child’s imagination can get:

My 3 year old daughter described an act with Micky Mouse that freaked me and my wife out. Who knows where the hell it came from. It clearly wasn’tbased on reality.

“Strong statements from a 2 year old” is verging on an oxymoron.

I hate to say “I told you so”. When father Jonathon Edington was arrested for killing neighbor Barry James after Edington’s daughter alleged that James had molested her, I admonished vigilante parents who ignore due process and take the law into their own hands. When you encourage that kind of behavior, you make it that much more likely that someone is going to murder an innocent man. And that’s exactly what has happened in the Edington case. New Haven, Connecticut police announced today that Barry James never touched Edington’s 2-year-old daughter. According to police, James had none of the pornographic material in his house that’s typical of child molesters, and had zero prior history of sexual assault.

So what now? Edington will stand trial for losing his shit and murdering an innocent man. The James family will sue the pants off of Edington and his kin. And police and prosecutors are still determining whether Edington’s wife needs to be charged for misleading authorities. From what I can tell, it sounds like the mother took some words spoken by the little girl – who said that James came to her “in the starry night” and put his penis on her belly – and let her own fear as a parent weave a story around them. Which is not surprising: kids often put words together in pseudo-intelligent ways, and express their fears through fantastic imagery. That’s why you never kill another person based solely on the testimony of a child. That’s why we have courts and juries and judges.

What a fucking mess. An innocent man dead, and a man whom everybody describes as a devoted father headed to jail for at least a decade or two. Jonathon Edington’s family is ruined. And sadly, it’s Jonathon Edington – and possibly his wife – who has ruined it.

“Mr. Bradway/We know your son is okay/Oh Mr. Bradway/Did you steal from the gays?“

With all apologies to Ozzy Osbourne for that butchering…

It seems that the greedy the rapacious Michael Bradway wasn’t content with convincing everybody that his son had cystic fibrosis in order to profit off of the sympathy. Now Bradway, of Cornwall, Connecticut, has been fired by gay rights nonprofit Love Makes a Family, on charges of accounting regularities. The group has reportedly found that records maintained by Bradway had been altered, and that at least one donation had been mishandled. (I’ll assume that we’re not taking about a mere five bucks in the tip jar here.) And that, it appears, isn’t even Bradway’s first foray into fraud. (Well, ignoring the whole “my son is dying” scam, of course.) In 1994, the faking father was sentenced to a year in jail for embezzling $167,000 from various people in a brokerage scam.

Anne Stanback, the nonprofit group’s director, is obviously upset about this development. But, she says, “it pales in comparison to the allegations about his son.” Actually, Anne, I think it makes it a little better. It would be one thing if Bradway were stealing only from his son. But now, it appears that he’s stealing from everybody! He doesn’t harbor any particularly animosity against his son – he’s just a bastard! Frankly, I think this ought to make it easier for the boy to cope knowing that his dad didn’t single him out.

Yeah. I’m not buying it either. I’m trying to work with what I have, people, and it ain’t much…

Yesterday I told you (thanks to hot tipper Rebecca) about Michael Bradway, the bad dad who kept his son artificially thin to convince the world that the boy had cystic fibrosis. A day later and there’s already a follow-up, as the Associated Press reports that Bradway is on suicide watch after attempting to "kill himself" prior to his arrest. But prosecutor John Massameno called the attempt "contrived". Whyso? Well, perhaps it’s because police found Bradway in a tub full of water with a belt tied around his neck, superficial cuts to his wrist, and some sleeping pills in his system. In other words, he attempted three partial methods of self-execution simultaneously.

Note to Bradway: for future reference, the belt works better when it’s tied to something that’s higher off the ground than you are tall. If you do that correctly, there’s no need for the pills or the pussy razor cuts. Memorize this info; I’m pretty sure the prison guards are forbidden from giving you any type of assistance.

Here’s an unbelievable tale from hot tipper Rebecca. I relayed this story to my wife, who kept screwing up her face in disbelief. Let’s see if you share her frustration. According to The Associated Press, Michael Bradway of Cornwall, Connecticut has been arrested on charges that he manufactured doctors’ bills, lied to school officials, and bamboozled his in-laws out of $38,000. Bradway, in short, convinced everybody around him – including his now-10-year-old son – that the boy had cystic fibrosis, and that his condition was getting worse as he got older. Bradway reportedly brought some truth to the lie by keeping his son on a starvation diet that kept the youngster gaunt and frail. (The child bounced back to perfect health after Connecticut Department of Children and Families took him into custody.)

Here’s where my wife’s incredulity comes in. According to this report, the parents were separated. By the sounds of it, Bradway had physical custody of his son, which would explain why he was able to sustain this ruse for half a decade. But my wife can’t help but wonder: Didn’t the mom go to at least a single doctor’s appointment? Wouldn’t you, if you were told your son had a crippling disease? I’m not ready to come down with thunderous judgment on mom yet – but I have to admit, it sounds suspicious. How did this joker get away with this for so long?

I waited a couple of days to post this until some more information came rolling in. Okay, that’s BS – I actually totally forgot about it. But better late than never, eh? Even so, with four days between us and the incident, it seems like everybody in Fairfield, Connecticut is issuing a collective "What the Fuck?" over the case of Jonathon Edington, a 29-year-old dad who stabbed his neighbor to death after Edington’s wife told him that the man next door had molested the Edingtons’ daughter.

Here’s what the press tells us we know. (And really, isn’t that all we need to know? America – what a country!) Edington’s wife filed a police complaint on Wednesday against Barry James, their next door neighbor, who his neighbors said has been exhibiting bizarre behavior in the past few months. In other words, Edington wigged out upon hearing the allegation and decided to go all Judge Dredd on his neighbor’s ass, climbing into his house through a window and butchering him with a knife.

This case is a little odd for this blog, as we usually cover crimes parents have committed towards their children. And Edington, by all reports, was a good parent. The phrase "doting dad" is popping up in most of the stories about Edington. All reports say he was a devoted father. Which raises the question: is it possible to be too devoted?

You know what I hate? I hate it when I’m chillin’ on my boat with my ex, and I’m like, "Bitch, get me some crack!", and she’s all like, "Get your own damn crack, lazy-ass motherfucka!", and I’m like, "Bitch!", and I have to pop up and lay a few backhands on her. And, you know, try and run her over with a boat. ‘Cause I don’t brook no disrespect when it comes to my rock.

Well, no, not really. First of all, I don’t do crack. (Does anybody do crack…or does crack do them? This parenthetical brought to you by the Partnership for a Drug-Free America(TM)). Second of all, I’m not a total asshole like 45-year-old Steven Winski of Stamford, Connecticut, who choked his ex with a length of rope when she refused to call his dealer for him. When she regained consciousness and lept from the boat, he allegedly tried to run her over with the craft. Nice.

Winski is a former felon who did time for keeping 11 illegal firearms, and threatening to use them to pop caps in no fewer than two asses.By my estimate, we have two bad parents here: Winski, who sired two of his ex’s children; and the ex, who should have known better than to keep associating with this psycho. Here’s hoping mom grows a little wiser in the wake of her near-death experience.

You know it’s going to be a sad day when you see the words “birthday party” and “melee” in the same sentence. Seems things got a bit rowdy at a one-year-old’s Happy B-Day celebration in East Hartford, Connecticut. Then a neighbor from an apartment below went upstairs to complain about the noise – and that’s when things got real interesting. By the time the dust had settled, six people had been stabbed. The “melee” was so fierce, police ran out of restraining devices.

What’s most fascinating about this story is that there is no indication of who the parents are, where they were at the time, and how involved they were in everything spiraling out of control. At the very least, mom and dad could stand to keep better company. (Understatement of the Year 2005 Award Recipient!)

You know what I have to remember my 1st? A picture of me in my high chair, covered in cake. What’s this poor kid going to have? A nice set of mug shots. Happy fucking birthday, baby. Let’s hope your 2nd is spent in better company than the 1st.

(Hat tip to Liz Brunson)