commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Although it’s rare, I’ve been known to occasionally go out on a limb and make dictatorial pronouncements that while not intended to offend, nonetheless anger certain folks. Today’s pronouncement is very simple. Children’s social services should routinely check up on any child who is being home-schooled. Why do I say this? Simple. During the many long, painful months we’ve been running All Things Crime Blog, we’ve seen repeated instances of home-schooled children being severely abused by their home-schooling parents. Coincidence? I think not. Rather, I suspect that parents who refuse to allow their kids to attend regular school will prove, in all too many cases, to have something very ugly to hide.
Does this mean that all home-schooling parents are abusing their kids? Of course not. The high rate of abuse among the home-schoolers merely means that extra precautions need to be taken to make sure that the home-schooling is for valid reasons and not simply to hide child abuse from the authorities. The recent case of a 7-year-old West Pennsylvania boy who was nearly starved to death by his abusive, home-schooling parents is an excellent case-in-point.
So go ahead people. Throw things at me. I’m a hard-headed fellow and I will stick by my guns.
Ray Sanchez and Morgan Winsor of CNN write:
A 7-year-old Pennsylvania boy beaten for sneaking food was nearly starved and weighed only 25 pounds when he arrived at a hospital, authorities said. The boy sometimes ate insects he caught on his porch.
The boy’s mother, Mary Rader, 28, and his grandparents, Dennis and Deana Beighley, turned themselves in at the Mercer County District Attorney’s office Wednesday and were charged with aggravated assault, unlawful restraint of a minor, false imprisonment, endangering the welfare of a child and conspiracy, according to court documents.
According to the criminal complaint, as reported in The Sharon Herald by Melissa Klaric:
The boy lived with his mother, grandparents, two sisters (ages 11 and 4) and a brother (9). The two girls were healthy, and the brother was underweight, but not as severely as the victim, Mercer County detectives said.
The boy was taken last month to UPMC Horizon, Greenville, and transferred to UPMC Children’s Hospital, Pittsburgh, when it was found he weighed 25 pounds. Since June 6, hospital officials said the boy has gained 20 pounds.
“The most important medicine used to treat him at the hospital was food. He was within a month of having a major cardiac event that he probably would not have recovered from,” Dr. Jennifer Wolford of UPMC Children’s Hospital Child Advocacy Center, stated.
“It is impossible to me that this severe neglect and active abuse was not visible. He was being starved in his own home around others of normal weight,” she stated.
The interesting thing is Rader had removed her son from Greenville schools so he could be home-schooled in August of 2013. We don’t know what condition he was in at that point, or how he was faring in regular school, but it seems quite likely that his condition worsened dramatically once he was removed from regular school. What is known is that once he was removed from regular school, he was reportedly not permitted out of the house except to go out on the back porch where in desperation due to extreme hunger, he would catch bugs and sometimes eat them.
Based on interviews with the victim and his siblings, he was allegedly fed only small portions of tuna fish and eggs and was reportedly beaten frequently with a belt, especially when he was caught sneaking food, typically bread with peanut butter.
He was not allowed to shower except as punishment with ice cold water. He also had two abscessed teeth which had not been treated and had to be removed after he was taken into custody by the authorities.
“The child was starved. (The victim) is the worst case of medical neglect that I have ever seen in my seven years as a pediatrician,” Wolford stated. “Multiple physicians at Children’s Hospital are in agreement with this assessment. There is not one physician at Children’s who disagree with this assessment.”
All of the children have been placed in the care of child welfare authorities.
The mother and grandparents were released on bond and will appear before District Judge Brian Arthur on July 30th.
* * * * *
First of all, these fiends should not have been released on bond. The two standard issues that must be determined when assessing bail is 1) whether the accused is a flight risk; and 2) whether the accused is a danger to the community. Although these folks are probably not flight risks (in fact, I would bet they rarely travel very far from home), it’s pretty obvious, based on what they did to their son, that they are a danger to the community.
Why am I skeptical about the value of home-schooling, particularly when it’s obvious that public schools all across America are flawed and are often hotbeds of bullying?
My answer is that children need to learn to socialize properly and effectively. This is a broad continuum and I’m not going to try to define what is means to be “properly and effectively socialized.” The point is that we human beings are social creatures and to be healthy and reasonably happy, we typically need to interact more or less positively with our peers. Being locked up, starved, beaten and only allowed to go out on the back porch to catch and eat bugs does not constitute proper socialization.
In my mind, and I’m clearly frustrated by this case, the sort of abuse these adults heaped on this boy is not dissimilar in degree from sexual abuse. This boy will carry this with him for the rest of his life; he will always be plagued with the horrible realization that his own mother used him most cruelly.
Ten years in state prison would not be out of line for this mother and these grandparents.