commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Should you bring a son into this world, and should you be a lady, and should there not a clear and present father in your son’s life, and should you decide to relocate with your female lover from the great state of Pennsylvania to the equally great state of Georgia, and should you be concerned about how best to discipline your 6-year-son who has behavioral issues and is a bit of a handful, and if you are a wise and sage woman, which you undoubtedly are (most of the time), you will make sure that when you make the long trek South, that you don’t leave your instruments of child discipline behind you in the Keystone state, but rather bring them with you to your new home in Georgia.
In this case, the instruments of discipline, which when utilized get your son extremely upset, thus suggesting that he just might learn his lesson, consist of a dog cage, a bag of cat litter and a big bottle of maple syrup.
But hey, whatever works! You got to keep your kid, who is apparently OCD, in line. If at times this calls for harsh measures, so be it. Anything is better than an out-of-control OCD brat. NOT!
It turns out that this beleaguered 24-year-old mother, whose name is Crystal Jean Hostetter, and her 30-year-old live-in lover, Sara Elizabeth McClain, went way too far a week ago Saturday and veered off into a netherworld of heinous discipline that should never be foisted upon boy, girl, man, woman or beast. Their cruel and unusual punishment has resulted in serious criminal charges being brought against them.
Deborah Hastings of the New York Daily News writes:
A little boy in the Atlanta suburb of Douglasville is now in foster care after his mother and her lover were charged with felony cruelty to a child for imprisoning the 6-year-old in an animal cage, making him hold a brick over his head and covering him in syrup and cat litter.
Crystal Jean Hostetter, 24, and her 30-year-old girlfriend, Sara Elizabeth McClain were also charged with reckless conduct.
The mother allegedly covered the boy’s hands and feet in syrup, even though she knew he had behavior issues that included a fear of being sticky. Then she and her girlfriend covered the syrup with cat litter, according to the Douglas County Sentinel newspaper.
This was no brief “punishment”. In fact, it reportedly lasted for two hours on this particular Saturday night, and there was at least one witness to the abuse – a neighbor who saw the women stuffing the child into the cage, according to police. During his punishment, the boy screamed “Please don’t kill me” and “I thought you loved me.”
11Alive’s Paul Crawley looked into this situation and interviewed the neighbor who reported that she was watching TV around 7 p.m. Saturday when she heard the boy crying and screaming. Like a good neighbor, the woman went out on her back porch and saw the women (it was a joint effort, of course) pour the syrup and cat litter on the boy, and then put him into the cage.
Our concerned citizen then called Children’s Services but they didn’t pick up, perhaps because it was evening. Now, truthfully, at this juncture, the neighbor probably should have gone next store and confronted the two women who were abusing the poor child so shamefully. Perhaps she was scared, though, that she’d be shot or get her ass kicked by the two “neighborhood jailers”. So although she, in a sense, let the terrified child suffer through two hours of hell in the dog kennel, she did not ignore the problem and on Monday April 21st, she reported the incident to a school counselor at the boy’s school, which her daughter also attended. The counselor did the right thing and contacted Children’s Services and the Douglasville police.
Hostetter and McClain were arrested the following day and are currently being held in the Douglas County jail without bond.
According to Douglasville Police Sgt. Todd Garner, who interviewed the boy after he was “liberated” from his mother and her lover, he was in decent physical condition, but bore the earmarks of having been mentally abused. In what is quite heartbreaking, the boy – who loves his mother just as virtually all abused children love their parents – kept asking the police how his mother was doing while suggesting that she gets crazy sometimes and needs help.
Indeed she does – help in the form of some serious mental health counseling combined with a couple of years in state prison.
* * * * *
When questioned, no doubt recognizing that the gig was up, the women made no attempt to deny the fact they had been punishing the boy. They admitted to forcing the child to hold bricks over his head in both hands and locking him in the dog cage. According to KXIA-TV, they claimed that they were only disciplining the child and that they had deliberately covered him in syrup, knowing that his fear of being sticky (perhaps a symptom of his OCD) would upset him, thus rendering the discipline effective.
After all, what’s the sense of disciplining a kid if the measures are ineffective?
The women and the boy had moved to Douglasville just last month and officials said they were checking with the Pennsylvania authorities, where the three had previously resided, to see if there were any previous instances of the women abusing the child.
* * * * *
Many folks are going to get very angry when they learn about what these two misguided disciplinarians did to this vulnerable child. Although, as many of you know, I generally lean toward short sentences combined with counseling and rehabilitation, in this case I genuinely believe that this particularly nasty and unnecessary crime should result in a couple of years in state prison for Hostetter and McClain, who although their names suggest a comedy team, were, in this instance, anything but funny.