Treehouseforkids.org

Isn't that the most awful story? I'm so glad the kids survived.

And I second Vince @1. Treehouse is so sweet it makes me cry.

Those parents must have been seriously off their rockers. I am surprised CPS could not see that and follow up. Not allowing your child to have water their whole life? That kind of thinking is so far out of my understanding of how parents think it baffles me.

Also those parents deserve life in prison. They are obviously a threat to society as their thinking is so far from normal it is dangerous to vulnerable people. This is literally why we lock people up, because they are dangerous.

The parents look so...normal. Not that how they look means anything, but it adds to the creepy/sickening factor when they look like people who live down the street.

Keep posting these, Dan. It's absurd that any straight psychopath can marry and reproduce, while intelligent, loving same-sex couples are forbidden.

the cps worker should be in jail, too. you see something like that, and then don't follow up?? how do you sleep at night?!

This is why I don't believe in God.

Those parents must have been seriously off their rockers. I am surprised CPS could not see that and follow up. Not allowing your child to have water their whole life?

Having seen less serious neglect/abuse of kids by stepparents (and suffering it myself), my guess is that the father didn't care, because he only cared about the wife and couldn't give two shits about his children, and the stepmother was determined to break the daughter.

And it wasn't her whole life. The first complaint came when the girl was nine, I believe, and the situation wasn't as dire. (She was skinny, but not emaciated.)

Jesus shit.

Is it too early for me to start drinking?

@7, funny, because the first thing that came to my mind reading the article was, "Jesus Fucking Christ, what is wrong with people?"

The sad thing is that this isn't the first. At least the children here lived, unlike Summer Phelps and Tyler DeLeon in Eastern Washington, both of whom suffered while the agencies and people tasked with protecting them continually dropped the ball.

Sick, sick fuckers. What is the deal with the water, fer chrissakes?!? I don't get that at all, unless torture was the only point. So fucking sad.

I don't want to pay for them to spend life in prison; forced, permanent castration is the order of the day.

I'm afraid this will have to be entirely anecdotal, but I have an interesting story about CPS.

A parent of a friend of mine temporarily took custody of an abused pair of children as a foster-parent under the auspices of CPS in Ohio. The mother of the children was an employee of the parent in question, who apparently conceived both the children out of wed-lock, to different fathers, could not prevent the second father-in-question from, on the one hand, "walloping" his own son by the mother; and on the other hand, he apparently had been to court several times over charges of sexually molesting the woman's child from another relationship, who was an early teenage girl.

So the foster-parent in question ended up having to watch over the boy as he had to have heart-replacement surgery (at the age of 4) as his heart had received several problems from what the surgeon described as likely "blunt-force-trauma," meaning being walloped by his biological father.

So, the foster-parent in question did everything she could to prevent this biological father from ever seeing either of these children ever again, but apparently CPS did everything they could to ensure the rapist-abusive father had all the access to the children they ever could. Apparently, the father of the abusive biological father is a minister in town and has a lot of pull locally, preventing anything from really being done in the incident.

Now the children are back in the custody of their biological mother, who continues to fail to prevent this abusive man from continuing to abuse these children.

I apologize for perhaps a certain lack of clarity when composing this testament, but I tend to see red whenever I think about it, so I hope to be forgiven.

What. The. FUCK?!

That idiot CPS didn't even make an effort to help this poor girl? These twisted adults... that's completely inhuman. I hope their respective cellmates are in prison for vigilantism and have a particular fondness for unknown children.

No wonder they call them "step-monsters". I'm with @13, but I think I'd add that they should have their hands cut off. If you don't have hands, you can't abuse someone else, right? At least it would make it a whole lot harder. Maybe just their thumbs...that might be enough, right? And the social worker should be stripped of licensing for not following through.

I don't understand how these things happen. My boyfriend is working as a social worker right now, and it's SO monitored and regulated, and he sees the kids over and over again. This kind of thing wouldn't escape notice. But maybe it's just because he cares about his job, and he cares about the kids he is charged with monitoring.

It takes a LONG FUCKING TIME of neglect to make your teeth fall out. That poor girl!

Good lord, they really do look like the couple that goes to PTA meetings regularly. I bet that's one reason the state didn't think twice about these kids: appearance is everything.

Also, I'm hoping they both have a rip-roaring good time in prison, particularly the wife. From what I hear, child abusers, especially in women's prisons, are the lowest on the totem pole.

@17

GOOD. They deserve a death sentance, sanctioned by the state or not.

@14 I understand your dismay. Children are at a disadvantage and basically powerless. That is why CPS was created. It is a way to intervene in an abusive situation. But, like everything human, it is not perfect. Parents can have a great deal of say in how their child is raised. That is why I posted @1 for Treehouse. There is something you can do besides feeling helpless. They need your help now.

CPS can be a joke. My young cousins have been in the legal guardianship of their grandmother and step-grandfather for three years. Their mother has 3 drug trafficking convictions (cocaine, heroin, and heroin) and their father has 4 different theft convictions and 2 drug charges (heroin). His son (10 at the time) saw him stick needles in his arms and had to take care of his sisters. Their kids don't want to see them, but CPS allows visitation and is working on getting "the family" back together. They want their Grandpa and Grandma, not the junkies. Their parents have had the chance to clean up. They haven't.

I have low faith in the CPS. Most people who have dealt with them do too. I know there are many wonderful, decent CPs workers--I'm just not sure how many I've actually met. Biological family is overrated. Kids deserve to be safe, with or without their bio parents, adoptive parents, or gay/lesbian parents.

@18,

I don't necessarily agree with that, but it does blow my mind that they weren't tried for false imprisonment and attempted murder. Do that shit to an adult, that's what the charges would be. Do that shit to a child, and it's just aggravated abuse or some other crap charge.

Fuck! I hate the world.

That horrifically evil Rebecca Long. She kept up with her knitting blog the entire time that poor child was being tortured.

Who exactly are you arguing against in your increasingly hateful screeds? Who is your imaginary debating partner holding some imaginary ridiculous positions? Do you really think someone is out there saying "at least these parents weren't gay?" This is a blustery and vacuous polemic directed at a moron made of straw.

You should stick to what you're good at, Dan -- your tone in political debate is unbearably shrill and your arguments are manipulative, and really rather nonsensical. Yes, there are Christian child abusers, and abusive straight parents. Therefore ... um, what?.

Two wrongs don't make a right, and mimicking the very worst tendencies of your putative foe makes a crackpot of you.

Anyone ever tell you you're a sick fuck, Dan?

@25 -

I think that he's just pointing out that here, yet again, is another example of straight parents being terrible human beings. Yet people constantly say that gay people are dangerous to have as parents as children.

Yet you never see this shit from gay parents.

I guess that's what #25 was going for, huh.

Does anyone need it pointed out that there are abusive straight parents out there, Michaelp?

This is blatant argument by insinuation. It's ad hominem mudslinging and muckraking of a low character, and it wouldn't pass the laugh test if the other side were doing it. It's venomous, it's polarizing, and it's divisive. It will convince no one of anything, it is a simple and bare expression of deep bitterness and rage.

#27 "people" eh? You know they have a tag for that on Wikipedia?

But I guess you missed #25's entire argument about Dan's propensity for the straw man and his ongoing disregard for his audience?

@ 30, you are the king of pedantry. Look, someone's entire point is undermined because he wasn't being formal! Therefore my emotional response is more rational than yours!

...

@25
Just the other day, in FEDERAL COURT, the lawyers for the Prop 8 proponents claimed over and over that the reason gay people (even those with children) cannot be allowed to marry is that children by definition do better with a married mother and father to whom they are biologically related.

And that no other relationship, by definition, can be as good.

And that the state has an obligation to enforce that.

Golly, maybe THAT'S the kind of people Dan is arguing with?

Three and a half years?

They only got three and a half years?

Jesus.

@29: "This is blatant argument by insinuation. It's ad hominem mudslinging and muckraking of a low character...."

I'm confused. You're talking about efforts to keep gay people from adopting, right? Argument by insinuation? Ad hominem? That's all the right has when it comes to arguing against gays having the same rights as straights.

Oh, and I'll add one more thing - you and I taxpayer are now going to be the ones paying for the suffering of these children, while Arkansas and Florida still deny gays and lesbians the right to adopt.

Awesome.

These stories always make me angry, since they hit a little too close to home. Unfortunately, in varying extremes, this kind of abuse is not uncommon. It's only the worst cases that surface publicly. It's probably one of the most overlooked methods of parental abuse out there because it is so hard to prove.

As a tween and teen, my mother padlocked the food cupboard so I couldn't eat it, but she unlocked it for my sibs at their request (such as when they wanted cereal, cookies, crackers, dried fruit, etc.). She hawkishly watched what I put on my sandwiches and kept me at a bare minimum (the "one piece of meat and one piece of cheese" rule).

It was only when the doctor noticed how I was 40 pounds underweight for my age and height and asked whether I had an eating disorder — only to hear my response of "No, I love food, but my mum just locks it up" — did I realize this was not normal parenting behaviour.

Whereas many of my friends then were worried about putting on more weight, I was worried about losing any more. Very socially atypical these days.

Yes, my mother was anorectic and bulimic. She projected that on her kids — first me, then my younger sister after I'd left.

#29, without wasting my breath TOO much further, I'm going to help you out a bit here.

Your argument has been made on these threads ad nauseam, by myself and many many others.

Dan will ignore it, or pretend to miss the point, and the logically-challenged fanboys will swarm. If you read the Slog comments long enough, you will find that a certain number of said fanboys have no problem turning just about any story on any subject into an opportunity to make a snide, spiteful comment about religious bigotry or just gay persecution in general.

Sadly this story is not about straight or gay parenting, it's about a poor little girl and boy whose lives will probably never be the same.

Anyway, I await the link to a rigorous statistical analysis on the rates of child abuse and neglect between straight and gay parents. Dan or the fanboys, I don't care who produces it. Then maybe we can put this to rest.

#31, I don't think weasel words have much to do with form. Anyway, pedantry aside, I didn't claim that is why his point is undermined. His point is undermined because "There are some bad straight parents out there. Therefore straight parents aren't better than gay parents" is not a rational argument by any stretch of the imagination.

When the worst shock stories of child abuse and neglect are paraded around to illustrate the premise? That's just bordering on being an asshole.

Agree to disagree?

@38. Perhaps because gay parents choose to have children, and don't accidentally pop one out because of the non-existent sex education in America, it makes sense that they would on average be better parents.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19…

@ 39, "agree to disagree?" Okay.

To all who think CPS is the worst of the worst: Case workers are mandated to do EVERYTHING they can do to keep families together. Terminating parental rights is incredibly difficult to do in Washington state and is rarely done.

It wasn't that many years ago when everyone was up in arms about the reaction by CPS and the police in Wenatchee to rumors of a child sex ring and how the children were removed from their homes before an investigation was completed.

CPS workers are not empowered to use their own judgement very often, but are expected to follow rigorous procedures.

But why? Why would they do this to kids? I just don't comprehend.

One problem with CPS when it is ineffectual is that if they make a visit and no further action is taken yet abuse IS in fact occurring, the abuser will redouble the abuse tenfold on the victim as punishment for the investigation.

This was my experience.

Foster care is by nature only temporary. The point of Child Protective Services and family law is to preserve the family at all cost. The best interests of the children are secondary to property rights. Generally the parents are required to attend parenting classes and take drug/alcohol counseling. When they've completed the course, the kids are returned. (If they don't, they're turned over to a relative, generally grandparents.) Most kids who're in abusive situations cycle in and out of foster care if it's ever reported (most abusive situations are not reported). Since the bad behavior continues or worsens since mom and dad are pissed at getting turned into the cops, kids are reluctant to report again.

@ 16,
This lady sounds like she has an eating disorder which she projected on to her kid. She probably was trying to "help" her step-daughter by keeping her from getting fat. Like Tesla pointed out, women with eating disorders can project them on to other people. In Arizona a few years ago we had a couple who were petrified their children would get fat. They forced them to subsist on some sort of bizarre quasi-religious vegan diet. Not only did they nearly starve three of their kids to death, but it is suspected they actually did kill another one by trying to pray away the kid's illness. (They actually had a fifth kid while in prison awaiting trial.) They were the children's biological parents.

http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2007-05-1…

p.s. Step monsters? Really? So non-bio parents can't be good parents? They're always out to get their non-blood relatives?

@27

Lombard, who is gay, is accused of inviting an undercover officer to have sex with his adopted 5-year-old son. In a search warrant for his home, investigators released a transcript of a Web chat between Lombard and Det. Timothy Palchak of the Washington Metropolitan Police Department. In it, Lombard invited Palchak, who he did not realize was a police detective, to fly to Durham to have sexual contact with the child.

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/archives…

Yes, 46, and Dan reported on that too. Nobody is trying to claim that all gay and lesbian parents are ideal; the point is that there is no indication that they are any worse than straight parents, which is what the anti-gay-adoption faction is trying tell us.

But I'm sure you know that, and you're deliberately pretending to miss the point so that you can feel better about being a dick.

@46 -

Touche!

What @18 said. There is no good reason for these two "people" to continue their time on this earth. Hang them tomorrow and be done with it.

It's important to bear in mind here that children are inclined to exaggerate situations and events.

@16: Hey, hey, hey! Not all step-parents are like that. My father's second wife, for instance. While she will never replace my own mother in my affections, she is certainly counted amongst my closest friends. She helped raise me, and did a damn good job.

As a couple of lesbian foster parents who are constantly visited at home by our "caring" social worker/s every time our (previously neglected & abused) 7 year old foster son acts up at school, and asked questions like "Are you sure you (disgusting lesbians) don't play slap ass all of the time in front of him so that he thinks it's okay to slap his friend on the ass at school?" this story makes me sick to my stomach. When he was living in a filthy one-room motel room with his meth-addicted (but Straight) father, the social workers saw no reason to remove our son from his care, but now that he lives with (obviously disgusting) lesbians, we're watched like vicious criminals. The foster system is ridiculous, and sad...I wish there was a way for these kids to get the compensation they're asking for without further bankrupting the already fiscally poor foster system.

Also, it took CPS 3 years to revoke our son's bio-dad's parental rights....even requiring phone call visits (because bio-dad is in NV, not WA) between our son and his abuser even after our son begged and begged to not have to make the calls. The "system" is flawed and broken, and should be completely overhauled.

(Good news for us, though, our adoption is almost final and we won't have to be under the scrutiny of our homophobic social worker any more.)

@ Gendun and everyone else who doesn't understand Dan's point here: who we want to fuck DOESN'T say anything about our parental abilities. You correctly picked up on the ridiculousness of Dan's proposition that straight people are bad parents; so please use your brain to realize that just like being straight doesn't make you a bad parent, being gay doesn't make you a bad parent either.

Biological parents should be required to undergo the same scrutiny as adoptive parents before they are ever allowed to leave the hospital with a baby. Why is it we care enough about adopted kids to require that their parents meet some minimal standards but tell 3 day old biological children - fuck you, you're on your own and let's hope your biological parents don't kill you?