Parents Behaving Badly

Recently we reported on the case of Clint and Lynn Engstrom, the Oshkosh, Wisconsin couple who kept Clint’s 13-year-old daughter in her room for 22 hours a day. Today was the teenager’s turn to tell her side of the story – in court.

According to the girl, she wasn’t physically locked in her room, but merely ordered to remain their for her “bad” behavior, which included talking back, hitting, kicking, and lying. In other words, being a pre-teen. When the teen asked her stepmom why she couldn’t see her friends from an old private school, Lynn Engstrom reportedly told her that all her friends hated her. Nice. It sounds like the parents’ treatment of this girl became a self-fulfilling prophecy: the more they told her she was bad, and treated her as bad, the more she internalized it…and the worse her punishments became.

Meanwhile, the blame game continues in fierce fashion, with Lynn Engstrom saying she did only what the girl’s psychiatrist told her to do, and with psychiatrist Dr. John Korger denying he ever told the parents to lock her in a bare room with a piss-soaked mattress. And the Engstrom’s attorney continues to maintain that the two did everything they could to “help” their daughter. Spare me. Depriving a kid of two years of her childhood? Treating her like the Cinderella of the house, while her three siblings slept in rooms stocked with toys, on clean and comfy beds?

That is criminal negligence. it’s abuse. And there is no excuse for it.

(Hat tip: Sinthyia)

Hot tipper Norma gave me the lowdown on one Francina Katina Shepard, who is apparently well known by Child Protective Services in Detroit, Michigan: three of her kids have been taken from her in the past. But that didn’t stop Shepard from bearing twins, and beating them both so severely that the 16-month-old boy died.

There’s very little information beyond that. Mostly all we have at this point are questions. Was CPS involved with these kids from the get-go, given Shepard’s history with the state? Did she give birth to them before or after the other kids were seized? In short, what (if any) is CPS’ culpability in this case? Obviously Shepard bears the brunt of the moral blame. But if this is another case of a state agency turning a blind eye to a known abuser, I’m going to blow my stack. It’s hard enough to watch what happens to some of the kids we profile on this site. It’s almost unbearable knowing that some of these tragedies could easily have been prevented.

If you have any information on this developing story – past CPS records, court records, etc. – please give us a heads-up.

(Some hot tipper supplied this link to me, but I lost their name. Sorry. It’s been a loooong week.)

What do you call a man who tries to blame his wife’s vicious murder, first on his wife’s lover, and then on his own daughter? You call him “somebody’s bitch in county”. You can also call him Brad Reay. The 47-year-old dad from Pierre, South Dakota got desperate when accused of killing 41-year-old Tami Reay after she declared she wanted a divorce. Days later, her naked body was found nearby, with several penetration wounds running to the hilt of the blade that had stabbed her.

During his court testimony, Reay testified that he had found his daughter Haylee by her mom’s bed, holding a bloodied kitchen knife. (It was just coincidental that this freak-out happened days after Brad’s marriage fell apart, you see.) After supposedly cleaning her off, Reay dumped his dear departed wife’s body, stripping her naked and shoving a condom up her ass to make it look like a rape.

All to protect his daughter. Right? Right.

Not surprisingly, Haylee had quite a different story. According to her, she woke up one day and found her mother gone – and her dad insisting that she not talk about it to anybody. She also maintained that her dad had always been cold with her, and that the two didn’t have a good relationship. The jury believed Haylee more than her old man, and found him guilty of first degree murder. The jury also considered manslaughter, but apparently decided that this wasn’t an act of passion or rage: it was an act of cold-blooded calculation.

The murder of Tami Reay is horrifying. But blaming it on your daughter? Lord, what a scumbag.

I can’t find whether the prosecution intends to seek the death penalty. Given that South Dakota hasn’t executed anyone since the mid-1970s, I doubt it. Ah well. He’ll rot the rest of his life in prison…and those of us on the outside will ensure his name lives on in infamy.

Hosanna! The mom and four kids who were abducted this weekend have been found safe in a motel room. The childrens’ father, Jerry D. White, took them there by force after invading the home of his ex-girlfriend Kimberly M. Walker, shooting her sister’s boyfriend in the process. Police arrested the ne’er-do-well dad as he tried to escape through the motel heating vent.

Heheheheheh. Sorry, but I can’t get the image out of my head of White’s legs dangling out of a vent as police shout “FREEZE!!” and point pistols at his ass.

Authorities were able to trace White because Walker had been able to make several calls to a family from a nearby pay phone. It’s unclear if White let her call the family, or if she snuck out. If the latter, he may be one of the dumbest criminals to grace the Earth. Either that, or he’s just a deeply troubled man who, when push came to shove, couldn’t cause any real harm to his family. Mind you, he nearly killed a man, so let’s not give Jerry D. White too much credit.

Thank God we can laugh about it now. This is a fitting end to what might have been an awful tragedy. If only they all ended like this…

For those who hadn’t heard, LaShaun Harris, the Oakland, California mom who thought God told her to toss her kids into the river, was found legally insane by a judge. Too bad no one made that determination BEFORE she murdered her children. This is an obviously sick woman who should never have been left to care for kids.

CNN is reporting that police are on the hunt for Jerry D. White of Elkhart, Indiana, who burst into the home of Kimberly Walker, shot her sister’s fiance, and abducted Walker and their four children, ranging in ages from 16 months to nine years.

White and Walker’s 9-year-old, Jaylan, is a severe asthmatic who needs to be on a ventilator several times daily; White left the ventilator behind. Nice.

It’s way to early to tell how this is going to end, but based on that tidbit of evidence, and on the fact that police have found the cars White and Walker were driving, I have a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.

Brandy Blair of Lincoln, Nebraska was sentenced to 30-to-40 years in prison after her 22-month-old son, Christian Reifler, accidentally electrocuted himself after being left alone in a bedroom for 36 hours.

The Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the trail court’s refusal to give the jury instruction that included the offense of negligent child abuse entitled Blair to a new trial.

On a Monday, Blair fed her son, then put him in the room where he was later found dead. Blair then left and went to a neighbor’s house to smoke meth. She was gone all day Tuesday. Blair came home and checked on her son on Wednesday morning. Seven hours later she visited Lincoln’s Pawnee Lake without checking on Christian. Blair asked her brother and another person living at her home to watch the boy Wednesday evening. When they went to the room to feed him at 5:30 p.m., he was dead. The autopsy later declared that Christian died when the flow of electricity stopped his heart after he inserted a staple into an outlet. He was also severely dehydrated and malnourished.

Rules are rules, so I understand the court’s decision. Yet, the expense of another trial is a waste of taxpayer funds. Even with the introduction of the offense of negligent child abuse in a new trail, I hope those good Huskers will award Blair with another sentence of 30-40 years in prison.

And maybe add a few more years just for the hell of it.

Holy fracking SHIT, people. This very well might signal the End Times.

Shortly after I posted the story this morning about Shawn Michael Mohan, the dad who allegedly shot his 12-day-old son with a BB gun, commenter Mommy made a rather snide remark about how I’d gotten the facts of the case wrong. The boy, she insisted, was six years old, not 12 days.

I was going to issue a well-meaning smackdown and tell Mommy to read the article I had linked to, when tipper Sinthyia emailed me. She had indeed sent me a story about a dad shooting his son with a BB gun…but it wasn’t Shawn Michael Mohan. I looked at the link she sent and, sure enough, another dad was accused this week of the exact same crime. Teorry Henderson of Groveland, Florida told police that he shot his 4-year-old in order to teach him a lesson. Why? Because the 4-year-old had shot his sister with the gun! In a “punishment” worthy of Saddam Hussein, Henderson made the boy take his shirt off and then fired at him. Unfortunately for dad, his kid blabbed about the shooting at preschool, leading Henderson to face felony child abuse charges.

Um…Mr. Henderson? Can you straighten out a few things? Like, what the FUCK was your 4-year-old doing with a BB gun in the first goddamn place?! Isn’t it your responsibility to keep your little guy away from loaded weapons? How is this anyone’s fault but yours?

I see a perfect punishment for Mr. Henderson and Mr. Mohan: a 21-BB-gun salute. Only the shooters won’t be aiming into the air.

What the hell is with the multiple BB gun incidents this week? Outside of these two cases, there are other incidents of BB gun vandalism springing up all over. Is the NRA holding some sort of contest? Sigh. I yearn for that simpler time, when I could see the words “man shoots son with BB gun” multiple times in my inbox, and safely assume that they all referred to the same story.

(Hat tip: Sinthyia. For real this time.)

St. Charles, Missouri is home to Shawn Michael Mohan, a 20-year-old who could use a few parenting lessons. Or maybe a few years in the penitentiary is more appropriate. Police are accusing Mohan of repeatedly shooting his 12-day-old son with a BB guns.

The boy’s doctors discovered the circular injuries in the child’s skin when Mohan brought him in for a routine check-up. Mohan claims it was an accident, but the police aren’t buying that. First, the kid was shot multiple times. Second, Mohan is already serving five years of probation for inflicting a head injury on his first child.

Oooops. So much for having learned his lesson. Time to lock Mr. Mohan away for a while, for the good of society – not to mention his kids. Oh yeah, and how about a court-ordered vasectomy while we’re at it? Mohan’s already 0 for 2 at the parental bat, for God sakes.

(Hat tips: Sinthyia, Pamela, Amy)

(Image courtesy UPI)

Here’s one for the ages from Sand Lake, Michigan. 28-year-old Elizabeth J. Dillon can’t understand why authorities are so angry that she left her three kids, twins age 6 and a 22-month-old – in a running pickup truck for over three hours while she waited for a saddle shop to make her parts for a bridle. The irony is that the owner of Circle JF Saddlery in Lowell has a special room where kids can wait. But, no – Dillon decided it was better for them to wait over three hours in a running vehicle that was parked in a two-hour parking spot, while she hung out alone in the shop and watched the owner work. Nothing happened to the kids before police arrived…unless you count the baby, who was sitting in his own piss.

Brilliant.

Dillion insists that she’s a “good mom” who made mistakes, but shouldn’t be charged with felony child abuse. Too bad she never heard of Amy Elizabeth Calvin, who found out the hard way what can happen when you leave your child in a car unattended for even a few minutes. Not to mention what might have happened if the 6-year-old had figured out how to get the vehicle out of Park. Good GOD, woman, where’s your paranoid parental imagination?!

Saddlery owner Joel Forrest, who was much less gobsmacked than Dillon, hit the nail on the head: “If you go into a gas station and you have kids,” he told reporters, “you take them in with you.” Precisely.

Dillon’s kids are back with her while she fends off charges of second degree child abuse. If i were her, I’d practice begging for mercy. Stupidity may not be a great defense, but in this case, it’s the only defense she has.

(Hat tip: Sinthyia)

Someone needs to give Veronica Francine Ramirez a few simple lessons in what is and is not appropriate when you’re a parent, because it appears that she doesn’t even have the basics down pat. The 24-year-old mama decided it would be a fine idea to drag newborn Isiah with her to Houston, where she apparently partied like it was 1999. When she returned to San Antonio, she did so without Isiah or his belongings in tow…and she couldn’t tell authorities what she had done with him. Ramirez was so drugged out that the best she could tell the cops was that she “may” have handed the child off to two strange women in a truck stop restroom. Or maybe it was an Asian couple. Hey, it could have been an Asian lesbian couple, for all we (or Ramirez) know.

Why would the mom do this? Who the hell knows? Who can tell what was – or, more accurately, what wasn’t – going through this woman’s head?

Don’t fret – Isiah is safe. There’s no word on how we was found, but authorities say he’s okay. Odds are he’ll be even better once the state trades in his mother for a better model. Congratulations, Miss Ramirez. It doesn’t sound like you much wanted a baby in your life. You’re about to have your heart’s desire fulfilled by Child Protective Services.

(Hat tip: Ashley)

Today’s horror comes courtesy of Sinthyia. Straight outta DeSoto, Texas, we give you 41-year-old Joyce Luvern Burks, whose 4-year-old foster daughter, Katherine Frances, died after a vicious beating from Burks’ 14-year-old son that left Katherine with a fractured skull and brain damage, among other injuries.

Police were disgusted to learn that Burks might have saved her little girl’s life after her son had bodyslammed her to the point of death. But instead, the alleged Mom from Hell spent hours at the laundromat, washing the blanket on which the girl had bled. According to the timeline, based on Burks’ own revised testimony to police, Mommy Dearest noticed Katherine getting sick around 5pm. Instead of calling the ambulance or taking the girl to the hospital, Burks sat down with the other kids for a bit of tellie – because she had to catch Zoey 101 before she could be bothered to assist her dying foster daughter. Then, on the way to the hospital, Burks popped into the laundromat to do her washing. (You know, the kind of washing that the rest of us call “evidence tampering.”) They didn’t arrive at the hospital until sometime after 8:30pm. (The story is unclear about exactly when they arrived there.)

According to the report, Burks was a foster parent under Mesa Family Services Inc., whose operations have since been taken over by Therapeutic Family Life. Therapeutic knew that the fosters in Burks’ home complained that the son abused them. Burks turned a deaf ear to them, insisting that her little snuggums could do no foul. The state is lashing out at Therapeutic, saying that didn’t adequately supervise foster parents like Burks. Gee, you think?

I am so fucking sick and tired of this shit. These poor fucking foster kids are in their situation because their previous parents neglected them, committed a crime, or otherwise did something worthy of landing a spot on this blog. Marbella Frances lost custody of her kids after leaving them home alone. Katherine Frances was taken out of her home to “keep her safe”. Instead, she was murdered by a brutish teen, and a mom who didn’t give two shits about reining him in. She would’ve been better off being neglected at home.

At least there’s something of a happy element to this story. Katherine’s death managed to have a poignant meaning for five-year-old Claire Fowler, who is alive and healthy today after receiving Katherine Frances’ heart. And Marbella Frances has file suit against the foster care companies and the Burks family. From the way Marbella talks, it seems this tragedy has strengthened her resolve to keep her own shit together, and make sure that some change in the Texas foster care system results from Katherine Frances’ sad, tragic death.

Here’s hoping.

Update on the John Patrick Violette case: Police in North Carolina say they have no freaking idea why Violette flipped his shit and decapitated his daughter. One insanity plea, coming right up. I’ll be curious to see whether his wife Amber sticks by him, or runs screaming. As I’ve said in the past, I doubt I could stick by my spouse, even if I were convinced they had lost it. If you want some raucous commentary on the case, check out the Freepers, many of whom are calling for all manner of gruesome punishments – all ending in death.

Here’s another story that should make all well-meaning people ask the question: “Why would you adopt kids just to treat them like this?” Today’s case involves Tamika Shuntell Williams of Warren, Michigan, who adopted two twin girls, now 8, because Williams herself couldn’t conceive. How did Williams treat her precious gifts? According to quiet, fearful testimony from the girls themselves, the “parental love” included being beaten, tied to a bedroom door, tied down to a bed, bathed in bleach, burned with cigarettes (AND the lighter), struck with a belt, bitten on the head, and threatened with decapitation if they told anybody about these crimes.

The testimony came several weeks after the terrified girls previously tried to testify, but couldn’t.

It’s nearly impossible not to believe a story like this. Unless the defense can make a strong case that someone planted all of these ideas in these girls’ head (and explain away the physical evidence), mom is going to jail for a long spell.

So again, I ask: why? Why bring two children in your home, just so you can torture them? What illness possesses people to recruit kids just so they can be tortured? Was she herself raised like this – subject to constant abuse for merely minor infractions?

The only conclusion I can come to is that some people just get off on this. It thrills them to control and inflict pain on others. Shuntell’s parents may or may not have had this legacy of sadism passed on to her by those who “loved” her. Who knows? With any luck, though, authorities have prevented this from being passed on to the girls she was supposed to protect.

(Hat tip: Jean)

More drunk parenting! Jason Blood of Schenectady, New York reportedly downed a pint of whiskey before taking his 2-year-old boy out for a walk in the stroller. When police confronted the 38-year-old dad, he pissed himself. Classy. And here I thought that was the kid’s job.