by Patrick H. Moore
There is a new Reality TV show called “Parents from Hell and the Children They Abuse” that is Number One with a Bullet. The object of the game is to determine which set of “parents from hell” will stay in the competition until the bitter end and win the Evil Parents of the Year award. The key factors that go into the judging are — in no particular order:
- The Hideousness of the Child Abuse
- The Creativity of the Child Abuse
- The Length of the Prison Sentence the Parents Ultimately Receive
Winners are selected once a month and then the twelve winners compete against each other for the grand prize. The irony of the show is that each winning couple actually loses big time. Doing 30 to 50 years of hard time while wearing the brand of an extreme child abuser is probably not a pleasant way to spend your “mature” years.
My favorite candidates for the month of November are Brian Gore, 31, and Shannon Gore, 26, formerly of Hayes, Virginia, now residents of the Virginia Commonwealth’s state prison system. The Gores pleaded guilty to felony child abuse and entered an Alford plea on charges of aggravated malicious wounding, according to the Associated Press. An Alford plea is not an outright admission of guilt, but rather a concession that there is enough evidence for a conviction.
Although the Gores were only sentenced to 30 years — a middling sentence in the “severe child abuse” sweepstakes — they are still in the running to win the November “parents from hell” award based on the hideousness of their distinctive form of child abuse combined with their remarkable negligence. Here is the situation that led to their arrest in May 2011, as reported by the Huffington Post:
Their daughter’s “room” was a makeshift cage, comprised of an upside-down crib held in place with a board and boxes stacked on top. In other words, the child was held prisoner in an upside down crib with a bunch of crap on top of it to weight it down so that she could not escape.
The girl was starving, naked, covered in feces, and so cramped in the crib that she could not fully extend her legs, according to the Daily Press.
She was so hungry that she was eating pieces of her own flaking skin, according to ABC News. At age 6, she weighed under 16 pounds.
The girl was born at home, had no birth certificate, and had apparently never been to a doctor. Her father told authorities that she had Down’s syndrome and cerebral palsy, but there were no medical records to support this claim.
Now I realize that it can be argued that this particular form of imprisonment is not overly imaginative, but keep in mind that most of these “parents from hell” are not the sharpest knives in the cutlery drawer.
And to their credit, the Gores, with the help of some determined investigators with a penchant for digging, managed to produce the body of a thoroughly decomposed child who was buried near the house. They say the devil is a logician and Brian Gore, quite logically, told investigators that he did not call 911 after the child, who was born in 2007, experienced trouble breathing because he was afraid the law would discover that he and Shannon kept their daughter in a cage.
The Gore’s diabolical nature, an important factor in victorious “parents from hell”, is further revealed in the fact they were not charged with the child’s death. Charges could not be brought because the poor thing’s body was so thoroughly decomposed that medical examiners could not determine a cause of death.
And then, just to keep everyone guessing, the Gore’s had a third child, a one-month-old boy, who was healthy and unharmed at the time of their arrest.
A la Ariel Castro, neighbors and people close to the family stated that they were aware of the Gore’s 1-month-old son, but had no knowledge of either the 16-pound six-year-old or the deceased child.
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In an email,the child victim’s attorney, Brian Decker, informed WTKR that she is “progressing as well as you can expect, given the trauma that she has been through.” Decker wrote that she is “trying to be a normal child” and has been placed with a family who puts her needs first.
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One of the criteria for winning the monthly Parents from Hell sweepstakes is that the candidates must inspire such virulent hatred on the part of the judges that they would gladly cast them into a pit of writhing vipers and watch with satisfaction as the venom-laden serpents fanged them to death. I believe the Gores inspire that level of Hatred. Thus, they just might win this month’s competition.