Sound Nutrition Mandated for Good Health

"We must explain to the parents before compelling them, but we can no longer tolerate this endangerment."
"We are talking here about stunted growth and psychomotor delays, under-nutrition, significant anaemia. Some developments must be done at a specific time in life and if they are not done, it is irreversible."
"When we are children, the body manufactures among other things brain cells. That brings with it a major requirement for proteins and essential fatty acids. The body itself does not produce these, they have to be taken in from animal proteins. We are speaking here of retarded growth in height and weight, as well as retarded psycho-motor development, malnutrition an severe anaemia. Some developments have to take place at a precise moment of life. Otherwise, the delay is irreversible. It is not recommended, and may even be forbidden, to submit a child, in particular during periods of rapid growth, to a potentially destabilizing diet."
Professor Georges Casimir,  Queen Fabiola Children's Hospital

"What a load of ignorant codswallop! A well-planned vegan diet is perfect for babies and children."
"But as with any dietary regime, it's the parents' responsibility to ensure their child is getting all the necessary nutrients."
Dawn Carr, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals

"It's possible to provide all the nutrients needed for growth and development without animal products."
"[It is] recognized that well-planned vegan diets can support healthy living in people of all ages, including infants, children, teenagers and pregnant and breastfeeding women."
Heather Russell, dietitian, The Vegan Society

"[The demise of 7-month-old baby Lucas was] the result of the systematic offer of food that was not suitable."
"[Because of that imposed diet], his health was seriously impeded and he eventually died [three years ago, weighing only 4.3 kilograms (9.5 pounds), barely 1 kilogram [2.2 pounds] more in weight than when he was born]."
"It is clear that the defendants have already been severely punished because they need to proceed with life in the knowledge that they are responsible for the death of their son, who they truly loved."
Judge Mieke Butstraen, Belgian court, June 2017

Professor Casimir was instrumental in leading the commission responsible for writing a report issued by the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium. It has the recognized authority of a legal opinion. And that legal opinion reached through a collaboration of medical and scientific professionals could very much influence future court judgements in Belgium where a number of deaths have occurred in schools, nurseries and hospitals, all traced to the fact that Belgian parents are placing their children on vegan diets.

The couple in Beveren, convicted of withholding a nutritious diet from their baby who died of malnutrition and dehydration, fed the infant vegetable 'milk' exclusively. Because the judge considered that the loss of their youngest child entirely the result of their choice of nutrition for him represented punishment sufficient unto itself, they were given a six-month suspended sentence. The seven-month-old's vital organs were considerably smaller than they should have been, with no fat surrounding them.

Estimates of the number of children in Belgium affected by their parents' decision to feed them a strictly vegan diet run to three percent. And because there has been a rash of infant and child deaths linked to the vegan diet, doctors in Belgium now call for prosecution of parents who persist in withholding a more normal diet from their children. According to the Royal Academy of Medicine of Belgium the legal opinion they have produced states it to be unethical to subject children to veganism.

A vegan diet is exclusive of animal proteins and vital amino acids required by growing children to aid in their development, and in the prevention of health problems. Should such a diet be complemented with medical supervision, blood tests and vitamin supplements, the diet could be made child-safe. But the opinion points out that most parents are not qualified to ensure that these provisions are seen to. The parents of the 7-month-old who died operated a vegan provisions shop and were obviously committed to veganism.

A Belgian official responsible for child protection initiated the study that resulted in the professional opinion. Bernard De Vos, in view of hospitals in Belgium reporting a growth in the number of children reporting with a range of ailments after being fed a vegan diet, felt the situation required a deep analysis and turned to the professional pediatric group for an opinion, feeling it incumbent upon himself to make that request as the country's children's rights commissioner.

A Belgian law dating to 1961 holds that no one can be convicted of "non-assistance to a person in danger", a crime carrying a sentence of up to two years in prison along with fines, if they are unaware they are placing someone in danger even though the recently issued legal opinion makes it common knowledge of the potentially lethal effects of a vegan diet. 

In other words, a public education campaign is required to ensure that all parents are aware of the situation, to refrain from placing their children in danger through an inappropriate diet.

© Pxhere

Feeding a child a vegan diet is “unsuitable and not to be recommended,” according to the Royal Academy of Medicine.

Child Abuse by Any Other Name

"We knew that early childhood is the critical time for obesity prevention strategies. If we intervene earlier, it's easier to change the trajectory of weight gain."
Suzanne Biro, (former) research associate, department of family medicine, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario

"Data speaks. I see these children in my clinical practice. So yes, it's a problem."
Dr. Catherine Birken, Hospital for Sick Children, obesity treatment program, Toronto

"[Despite the rarity of serious health risks in obese toddlers] ...certainly we have five- and six-year-olds who have life-threatening conditions [like severe sleep apnea or uncontrolled diabetes. With toddlers] we certainly see more subtle stuff where heavy toddlers experience difficulty reaching developmental milestones. It's harder to stand up, harder to walk, harder to run."
"Probably by age two or three they might start to feel some of the shaming that people deliver to obese people -- jokes that might be told about them by daycare providers, or their parents. So there's some psychological risk there."
"It's really not an issue of parents not caring or being lazy. They're just navigating a world where the odds are stacked against them [with the ubiquitousness of] cheap, crappy foods [marketed to parents."
"Imagine how challenging it would be for a single mom who's barely making it to serve fresh steamed vegetables and lean meat and a freshly cut salad. Our environment isn't designed in a way to make that realistic, and helpful or easy. It makes more sense to stop at the drive-thru and get your kinds fed so they stop whining."
Dr. Dan Flanders, pediatrician, North York General Hospital

"[In instances where guiding/counselling of parents fails] placement of the severely obese child under protective custody warrants discussion."
"Despite a well-established constitutional right of parents to raise their children as they choose, the state may intervene to protect the child's interest."
2011 commentary, respected medical journal

"[Over-feeding a toddler does not constitute parental negligence until] you're into extreme morbid obesity [and a threat to life is immediate]."
"But we do have an obligation to step in and try to help this child."
Arthur Caplan, bioethicist, director, division of medical ethics, New York University Langone Medical Centre

Getty Images   As well as possible health issues, heavy toddlers may have trouble reaching their “developmental milestones,” one pediatrician says. “It’s harder to stand up, harder to walk, harder to run.”

A Canadian research team's conclusion led by Suzanne Biro was recently published in the latest issue of CMAJ Open, representing the first study in Canada to examine serious weight issues in toddlers. The research concludes that one in four 18-month-olds presents at that young age as overweight, obese or at overweight risk. Experts examining the study results consider it to be "alarming" in its verification of the extension from older age groups of obesity in children leaning further down the age demographic to children two and under.

And the question looms large: just who is it that is responsible for the situation, when a very young child has become so grossly weighted with extra fat that the child is unable to move with comfort? Certainly not everyone will agree with Dr. Flanders' generous view of parents' lack of time and knowledge, overwhelmed by the constant pressure of marketing, to make the effort to ensure their children eat wholesome, nutritious food in appropriate quantities to help them grow normally.

It is the most fundamental of issues that parents have a profound obligation to their young; to make certain that, through their efforts and their dedication to the well-being of their children, their early years are the time to set patterns of lifestyle that will stand the children in good stead throughout their lives, beginning when they are first exposed to expectations that their diet will represent  a wide array of whole foods, not junk food representing their daily fare, resulting in harm to their immediate and future health prospects.

The study examined weight and height (or length) measures for over eight thousand children under 20 years of age, constructed from electronic medical records obtained through family doctors and pediatricians in Ontario to discover that, in 2013, overall, 28 percent of children ages five to 19 were categorized as overweight or as obese. Over 1,400 billing codes for 18-month "well baby visits" (routine checkups) were extracted as well, over the period 2008 to 2013.

Of this group, roughly seven percent were categorized as overweight or obese; 19 percent were considered at risk of becoming overweight. The sample size represented one considerably larger than the national survey last undertaken, estimating overweight and obesity rates in children and teens through the 2009 to 2011 Statistics Canada's Canadian health measures survey which included only those children aged three or older.

According to Dr. Flanders, a specialist in obesity and nutrition, the average height of a two-year-old is 86 centimetres (2-feet-8-inches) and the normal weight for a child of this height would be about 11.5 kilograms (25 pounds). So any child that weighs in above 29 pounds (13 kg) is considered overweight, while above 32 pounds "which is about 40 percent additional body weight composed of extra fat tissue" would be considered obese.

Dr. Flanders lingers on "figuring out what's the most effective and humane way to approach this problem", and he posits more social services for families, as well as considering the manner in which to regulate how high-fat, sugary foods are marketed to parents and children. Put into perspective; the marketing targeting children on television appeals to a child's view of what looks like fun and promises to taste yummy, while the marketing focus aimed at generating acceptance from parents isn't that far off the message children lap up.

"Conveying a message to parents that it's their personal responsibility and they need to 'get it together and become better parents' isn't fair", contends Dr. Flanders. The question here is why is it not fair, since it is the parents' obligation as loving and concerned parents, to recognize and act upon that responsibility, to guide their children in the appropriate direction in such a fraught landscape as nutrition and health?

Other jurisdictions act upon the neglect by parents of children's guidance and concern, by acting to remove children from the care of neglectful or abusive parents, as a last resort. In the U.S. in 2011, an eight-year-old boy weighing 200 pounds was placed by child welfare workers in foster care. Several years ago in Britain, police arrested the parents of an 11-year-old child weighing 210 pounds, on suspicion of neglect.

Two-Plus-Two Equal-Four

"The most startling finding is the dramatic increase in hospital admission for self-harm among our young people."
"We knew from previous studies that this type of behaviour is there, but just seeing the numbers and the upward trend is particularly distressing."
Juliana Wu, manager, decision support and trauma registries Canadian Institute for Health Information

The Twins. Courtesy Jonathan Hobin

"It certainly confirms our experience as care providers across North America. In the last three to five years there's really been a surge in kids who are self-harming, particularly the girls."
"What we hear from the kids is that they're having a really hard time dealing with negative emotions or stress and that cutting or hurting themselves reduces that. They really have trouble handling negative emotions like fear, sadness, anger or despair. It just bubbles up inside them ... and they have not developed the coping strategies to deal with them."
"You will see kids whose arms look like railway tracks or have done a very deep cut or in a serious place. The question then is, why are these kids not picking up better ways to reduce stress?"
"With social media, kids are essentially always with their peers. And if their peers are abusive -- as they often are -- then they are constantly exposed to an environment in which they are being taught maladapted techniques. In many ways, they are being raised by their peers."
"Many things have changed in our society over the last ten or 12 years and now it's starting to catch up. We've all heard that 'it takes a village to raise a child' -- well the village is changing rapidly."
"The culture is allowing girls to be in more fights. We're living in a more violent society. But I would say that all bets are off. We just don't know about this group of kids. This is a different phenomena."
Dr. Kathleen Pager, head of psychiatry, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario

It's an unfortunate fact of life that there have always been neglected children, children left to their own devices, to try to figure out on their own, through observation and experience, how they will fit into the world around them. Needless to say it's the parents' responsibility when they have children to raise them in an emotionally supporting familial environment, giving them confidence, and endowing them with values that will sustain them throughout their lives.

That's the best-case scenario for child-raising, along with the provision of shelter, nutrition and exposure to learning experiences, including schooling. Part of that support comes from the state as well, in reliable access to health care when it is required, and academic opportunities to equip the young with knowledge and social skills. When these are lacking the fallout is confusion, sometimes resentment, and sometimes social aversion.

Perhaps it's a bit too smug to offer the opinion that when children come into the world those who bring them there have an obligation to prepare them for entry to the world around them. And in raising children nothing can be more important and vital to their well-being than emotional stability, support, understanding and encouragement at every step of the way, as well as discipline in the imparting of values.

In modern society much of that obligation fell to the mother, with the father's support. Usually one of the parents was always available at home busy with domestic duties, the most vital of which was the raising of children. When a cadre of women in the West decided that this convention was demeaning to a women's independence, leaving her a virtual slave to the wage-earner to whom she was linked, and by extension the children to whom she was intrinsically obligated, changes occurred.

Dignity and fulfillment were seen to be had in working outside the home, for a salary. When children were involved, as they invariably were, the search was on for someone, not the parents, to take the parents' children in hand in a 'minding' capacity and something elemental was irretrievably lost. The concern deeply held by parents in the well-being of their offspring had been off-loaded and contracted out to someone who had no such concerns.

Left adrift, but clinging to the 'quality time' that parents could manage to spare for their children in off-work hours, the consequences could very well have led to a basic insecurity in their children. Little wonder that an evolution occurred where peers took the place of adults in forming children's values and attitudes toward life. And perhaps for far too many a permanent anomie set in to plague a child's psyche.

That, and abuse of any kind that might be perpetrated and perpetuated in a less-than-ideal familial setting. Resulting in findings that conclude that self-harm accounts for over 80 percent of intentional injuries and such self-harm has increased by over 85 percent in recent years, and girls account for 80 percent of the young admitted to hospital for self-harm injury. Poisoning by alcohol, prescription and non-prescription drugs represents the most common self-harm administered by both boys and girls.

"When you work in this area [helping vulnerable children and youth] the thing that strikes you is how common it is. It is children from Vanier, Barrhaven, Kanata, Orleans and outlying areas [within the greater Ottawa area]. It is everywhere."
"I think people think this is a problem for those families or those children who are not in their demographic or their neighbourhood and that is just not the case."
"Some are affected by poverty, mental health issues and addictions, and some are not."
"People recognize the physical issues and don't recognize the mental health issues, particularly in young children."
Dr. Michelle Ward, head, Child and Youth Protection Clinic, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario

An estimated two percent of children in the greater Ottawa area with its million-plus population has experienced some manner of childhood trauma or abuse. Doctors at CHEO saw only those children requiring hospitalization or emergency care, resulting from abuse or neglect, in the past. Many high-risk children were left untreated for issues that could impede their growth and development.

A new clinic has opened at CHEO, headed by an expert in child maltreatment. Children are identified by the Children's Aid Society and often become their wards and are referred to CHEO for treatment. From all across the city they are seen at the clinic, from toddlers to teens, to be assessed for physical, psychological neglect, and for sexual abuse. The function of the clinic is to provide early, comprehensive, expert assistance in the treatment of issues of abuse and neglect.

At the same time, children can be screened for medical, developmental and behavioural concerns which might be associated with trauma and if left unchecked could escalate, leaving them incapable of leading a well balanced life in the future. Physicians proactively assess children and youth in need of intervention and treatment.

The Kind Heart of a Perfect Daughter

"I did not want to hurt or harm my kids, but it was a very big mistake. I will live heartbroken for the rest of my life. We love our kids."
"[M had forgiven her father] because she was a perfect daughter and had a kind heart."
Algerian father of twin girls, Edmonton

"This is a crime of inhumanity against small children. Few offences are as grave as causing mortal injuries to children."
"This was by his own hand and he must pay a steep price."
Justice Sheila Greckol, Court of Queen's Bench, Edmonton, Alberta

"It is difficult to imagine a more appalling case of manslaughter to be visited upon a helpless child. M died a long, excruciating death and was tortured repeatedly in the time leading up to her death. S's life with her parents was equally shocking and tortured."
Crown prosecutor Megan Rosborough

Court released police evidence photo shows the fridge in the home of Baby M was full of food while, as the Crown prosecutor argued, the children went without. PHOTO SUPPLIED

This criminal case was about two-year-old twin girls, one of whom has died, the other who is recovering. The remaining twin and her four-year-old brother were taken into protective custody, out of their parents' hands. Early on the morning of May 25, 2012 the father who cannot be named to protect the children, called 911. Baby M had stopped breathing while he was at work; on his return, the emergency call was made.

Paramedics on arrival to the home found the tiny girls each strapped into car seats with M not breathing, and with no discernible pulse. Both she and her sister S were emaciated, mere skin and bones. In contrast the four-year-old brother was in fine fettle, well fed and cared for. The boy slept in a clean bedroom with his parents. The bedroom the girls were kept in was soiled, the mattress filthy with urine. The little boy had clean clothing and plenty of toys; the girls had none.

The home was stocked with food, but the little girls were in starvation mode. M weighed 13 pounds, her twin slightly more. Both were covered with scabs and bruises. Little M had suffered blunt force cranial trauma. Though the parents mounted a legal challenge they lost control of the children's medical care; the courts ordered that M be removed from her respirator in September 2012. M died, and S lived, too weak to move legs or arms. She and her brother have now been adopted.

The father of the family pleaded guilty to manslaughter, aggravated assault and failing to provide the necessities of life. While M's condition was beyond the ability of medical science to preserve what was left of her life, S made a remarkable recovery. During the trial, Judge Greckol spoke of the personal misfortune that had visited the family; the father lost his family, his job and the potential of starting afresh in Canada.

In pronouncing sentence upon the father, Judge Greckol felt the appropriate punishment for the crime of torturing and abusing vulnerable infants would be 15 years in prison. Given credit for time already served, there is 12 years left on the sentence. Once the sentence has been served the children's father will be deported from Canada on his release from prison. The mother of the children was also charged though her case has not yet reached trial.

"They should have been able to rely on their father to protect, nurture, feed and love them. This was a beach of trust of nearly unfathomable dimensions", said Crown prosecutor Shelly Bykewich.

Their Ravaged Psyches

BBC News Photojournal

"When I got a bit older, they started a school inside the institution. One of the volunteers took this picture of me in my uniform.
"Some of the teachers were nice, but there was one woman I hated. She used to strip children naked and put them in cold water as a punishment. One time she beat me so much it made my head bleed.
"I never wanted to see her again – I still don’t. But a while ago I saw her in town and I ran off in the other direction."

BBC News Photojournal

Foreign volunteers

"Everything got a bit better when the volunteers came. But as soon as they left, things went back to normal."A few weeks after this photo was taken, we had our heads shaved again. [Viorica is on the bottom row, second from right]
"One time, when I was 10 or 11, I got hepatitis and no one noticed for a whole week.
"Eventually I was taken to the local hospital where some women felt sorry for me. They gave me some food to take back to the institution, but the staff took it away."

Those are the voices of Romania's children who have lived their lives in Romanian orphanages. The country is more humanely and economically advanced now than it was during its Soviet years under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, who himself and his extended family lived in palaces, though the people lived in desperate need. With the fall of the Soviet Union, a mass uprising in Romania removed Ceausescu from power, and he was summarily lynched.

Soon afterward the world was treated to photographic and news analysis of the living conditions in the country, its people deprived of normal indices of human comfort and entitlements. Not the least of which was freedom and hope for the future under an unspeakable tyranny. But the most abysmal conditions were those suffered by the country's out-of-sight-out-of-mind orphans living in inhumane concentration-camp conditions.

Those abandoned children were twice discarded; once by those who gave them birth, another time by the government.

When the outside world heard of the tens of thousands of wan and sickly, profoundly neglected Romanian children warehoused in pitiless, barely functional cold, grey institutions, stacked one upon the other in their own excrement, the normal human reaction of deep compassion and an eagerness to help resulted. There were television images of small malnourished children rocking themselves silently for inner comfort, lying on threadbare mattresses. Those images galvanized people to act.

"When people saw those images after the fall of Ceausescu, they looked at those babies and thought, 'What that child needs is love and I'm going to love that child and everything is going to be OK.' It turns out that that's not always the case. Everything isn't always OK and what they need is actually more than just a loving home. In fact, the kinds of challenges and difficulties of those kids make it very challenging to provide a really warm, supportive and loving home."
"I would hate for anybody to get the impression that all of the Romanian adoptees are sociopaths, because they're not. But given the early experiences of some of these children, they were very extreme. The deprivation, the horrific conditions they came from, I suppose in some ways we ought not to be surprised that some of them have really extreme disorders as adults now."
Lucy LeMare, associate professor, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver

"It was so overwhelming. The kids are there with their little pyjamas on, in their cribs, sleeping in their own excrement and urine. Horrific conditions."
"We adopted, as we were aware, children that were going to have special needs."
Sonya Paterson, adoptive mother

"Three-year-olds didn't chew because they'd never had solid food", explained Ms. LeMare. Bottles were tied to cribs for babies to feed themselves, in the compassionless expectation that they would figure out for themselves how to nourish themselves without the nourishment of loving care. "Nobody held it [the bottle] for them, or fed them or held the child. If the baby could cope with it, good; if not, they got sick and died", she explained.

Western families without children of their own flocked to Romania in hopes of adopting these abandoned, neglected, needy children. Over 1,400 children were brought from Romania in 1990 and 1991 to Canada, about half of them out of orphanages. Researchers at Simon Fraser University conceived of tracking the children's progress to attempt to ascertain how early deprivation of emotional bonds would later impact on these children.

They have used the past two decades to study the development of the children, surveying them as toddlers, following up twice as school-age children, and again at around age seventeen. A new survey is being initiated to gauge the social development and coping skills of the adults, in hopes that they might learn what helped and what failed to aid their capacity to handle their catastrophic early trauma in emotional deprivation and human bonding.

What the research has revealed to date is that the scars of their early neglect have created a deep reservoir of struggle and dysfunction. Survey results published in 2007 pointed out that about 40 percent of the Romanian adoptees were diagnosed with a mental disorder in comparison to 15 percent among the general Canadian youth population. Hardly a surprising conclusion, given the circumstances. The researchers found that difficulties experienced appeared directly proportional to the time children spent in the orphanages.

The last study found, in fact, that the need for helpful social coping services did not diminish with time; they increased as the children moved into their teen years. A spotlight was turned on the issue when a young woman in British Columbia by the name of Kayla Bourque tortured and killed her family pets and a court case developed. The judge hearing her case heard the expert testimony of a witness for the defence, that she was a psychopathic sexual sadist, adopted at eight months of age from a Romanian orphanage.

Professor LeMare speaks of that young woman as an extreme case. Among the adoptees there are more than their share of university graduates, young parents and role models. Along with the higher-than-average numbers of people with developmental disabilities, mental-health issues, criminal records and social struggles.

Deadly Affluenza

"We had over 180 years of life taken, future life not 180 years lived, but 180 years of future life taken and two of those were my wife and daughter."
"Money always seems to keep Ethan out of trouble. This was one time I did ask the court, that for justice, for money not to prevail and ultimately today I felt like money did prevail."
Eric Boyles, Fort Worth, Texas

Ethan Couch (screen shot)

 "The teen never learned to say that you're sorry if you hurt someone. If you hurt someone, you sent him money."Dr. G. Dick Miller, psychologist

Who might have predicted the dreadful occurrence that would take four lives  on an otherwise-pleasant enough June 16, 2013 evening. When a mother and daughter, Hollie Boyles, 52 and Shelby Boyles, 21, stopped on a dark country road south of Fort Worth to give aid to 24-year-old Breanna Mitchell whose SUV had broken down. Youth pastor, 42-year-old Brian Jennings, had the same idea, as he too pulled over to determine what he could do to be of assistance.

High on Valium and alcohol, the pickup truck driven by 16-year-old Ethan Couch plowed straight into the group at a speed estimated to have been 112 kilometres per hour. Aside from the four killed outright, there was an additional eleven people injured, several severely. Two of Ethan Couch's friends were in his truck with him. They were thrown from the truck on impact, and left in a paralyzed condition as a token of that memorable evening.

Ethan Couch and his friends had been out drinking, having a good time partying, that evening. They were on a mission to continue their partying. Drunk from the beer they had stolen from Walmart they were on the prowl to find more alcohol, somewhere. Ethan Couch had no idea what discipline meant; he was never taught to discipline himself and was never disciplined by his doting parents.

He lived a lifestyle quite out of the ordinary. Never being held accountable for anything he did. Never chastised and led by his loving parents to adopt and understand a core group of social values. There was no scarcity of money available, and whatever he wanted he was able to have without question. According to Dr. Miller, hired by the defence, the young man abused alcohol and was given "freedoms no young person should have."

He was permitted to drive at age 13. And he obviously felt there was nothing wrong, troubling, or immoral, let alone illegal about driving while under the influence of alcohol. Clearly, social and legal constraints might apply to most people, but certainly not him; he was immune to restraints of any kind. According to Dr. Miller, Ethan Couch was a victim of a rich-kid syndrome leading him to believe he could buy himself out of any situation.

And it appears he may be right. His sentencing was ten years' probation. He might have been given a 20-year jail term for his actions and their irremediable results impacting so horribly on the lives of other people, depriving four outright of life itself, and another eleven of their quality of future life. State District Judge Jean Boyd accepted that Ethan Couch was a 'victim' of "affluenza".

Not his fault he was never taught, either directly through careful counselling by responsible parents, or by the lifestyle example of self-disciplined parents that there are accountable consequences to one's decision-making and judgements. His parents are prepared to pay out $450,000 in costs to send their son for mandatory therapy.

They are continuing their life-lessons for their son. Buying him the opportunity to remain free from responsibility for his actions.

The vehicle he was driving that night hit a parked car, and it was sent into a Volkswagen Beetle driving in the opposite direction. People unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The parents of Ethan Couch are wealthy owners of a metal roofing company. Their future includes five lawsuits from families of his victims, claiming millions in damages.

Perhaps it is too much to hope that this litigious future will send these people into bankruptcy. If meting out justice in a court of law is too onerous to contemplate, leaving the victims fuming at the lack of justice, perhaps Dame Fortune has a plan of her own, for justice should demand that the parents of this conscienceless young man face the consequences of their dreadful parenting.

Officious Paternalism - Injurious to Health

"So, as he was going to the office to get his inhaler, he kind of was having a hard time and had to be carried into the office, and by the time he got there he had blacked out. To this day I really don't know how exactly the whole day unfolded for him."
"I received many a phone call stating Ryan had taken an inhaler to school and they found it in his bag and would like me to come pick it up because he wasn't even allowed to bring it home with him." "There's supposed to be one in the office and that's the only one he can have. I didn't understand why."
Sandra Gibbons, Staffordville, south-western Ontario

"Provided the doctor said it's fine for them to have the puffer, they will have a spare puffer somewhere in the school, probably the principal's office, but they will have (another) puffer in their pocket or in their bag, however they feel comfortable having it, but it will be on them at all times throughout the day."
"Hopefully we can take an important step toward ensuring a tragedy like this never happens again."
Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP Jeff Yurek

Ontario schools currently do not permit students with asthma to carry puffers with them. Sandra Gibbons, mother of 12-year-old Ryan Gibbons has been busy with a petition asking the government of Ontario to make certain that the province's school boards adopt standardized asthma management plans. She has urged all three political parties at Queen's Park to pass a private member's bill being presented by Jeff Yurek, Member of Provincial Parliament, to that effect.

The Ontario Lung Association is behind Mr. Yurek's bill. That charitable health-focused group emphasizes that there are 1.9-million people in the province suffering from asthma, that number inclusive of a half-million children. "Bill 135 will ensure that all schools in Ontario are safe for our children, especially the one in five with asthma", said the Association's spokeswoman, Andrea Stevens.

Sandra Gibbons is particularly anxious to have this bill pass. At the very least, as a memorial to her son. For the very best, to ensure that what occurred to her son will not happen to anyone else's child. Who, on October 9, 2012 suffered a severe asthma attack at school during recess. Ryan Gibbons informed his friends he wasn't feeling well. He was incapable of making it on his own to the school office where school board rules held that the puffer that he needed would be available only under supervision at the school office.

Whatever happened at that juncture made little difference to the outcome. Ryan died, at age twelve from a sever asthma attack that he could have been able on his own, with the use of his personal inhaler, to prevent from robbing him of life.

Ryan's friends did their best to carry him through to the office. The inhalers, kept under lock and key, including those that the school staff routinely confiscated from children bringing them on their person into school, had to be asked for, to enable their use. Instead of Ryan carrying the life-saving device he needed to ensure he would be able to meet emergencies he well knew how to look after himself, he fell victim to a harmfully ignorant, paternalistic attitude of supervision.

The cost of that attitude was a young boy's life.

Foster Parents From Hell

"As bad as you think that house was on the outside, that's probably the cleanest part of that place. It was filthy, feces on the floor, holes in the wall.  The bathroom, you could see from outside of the hall into the bathroom. Sink was trashed. No running water."
Eddie Cathey, Union County Sheriff, North Carolina

Shocking conditions: Wanda Sue Larson and Dorian Lee Harper were arrested Friday after a sheriff's deputy found the shivering 11-year-old boy

Little wonder so many young people become traumatized by their experience in foster homes. This provided quite the revelation, when it was revealed that Wanda Sue Larson, and Dorian Lee Harper, adoptive parents to four children who were wards of the county, and serving as foster parents to a fifth child, were horrendously maltreating the children in the most miserably unforgivable way.

The children slept in one room of the house, on the floor, a floor that was covered with feces. What makes this even more mind-bogglingly unbelievable is that the two people who took these vulnerable children into their care would have been recognized as responsible members of their community.

Dorian Lee Harper was an emergency room nurse at CMC-Union in Monroe, North Carolina, while his wife Wanda Sue Larson was a supervisor with the Union County Department of Social Services.

Together, they assumed responsibility for the care and nourishment of five young children who were entrusted to them by their community. They are both now under arrest for failing that trust. The fifth child, an eleven-year-old boy whom they fostered was discovered, shivering with cold, a dead chicken around his neck, handcuffed to the front porch of the house.

It just happened to be a sheriff's deputy who discovered the presence of the boy in his helpless condition. He was, presumably, being punished by his foster parents -- who evidently held a strict code of ethics -- for some unspeakable childhood infraction he had been guilty of, and which brought their wrath down on the child.

The two upstanding members of their community have been charged with intentional child abuse, inflicting serious injury, false imprisonment and cruelty to animals. The cruelty to animals portion of the charges stemmed from the fact that these two kept on their property and without proper care for them as well, dozens of chickens, turkeys, geese, two llamas and a horse. Dogs lived in the house with the children.

The Sheriff's deputy happened to be on site, investigating a complaint at a neighbouring property about animal services. And that is when his attention was brought to the shivering child shackled to the porch with a dead chicken draped about his neck. All of the children were hungry and discovered to be suffering from malnutrition.

Which leaves a curious observer to wonder at the rather casual manner in which children are handed over to those incapable of furnishing a decent life for them. Would not the Union Country Department of Social Services routinely check to ensure that living conditions are decently hygienic, that children are well fed and clothed and cared for?

One look around the dilapidated property with the rank stench of uncleanliness and the unkempt conditions in which the children were kept should have sufficed to have them removed and their adopted and foster parents charged with neglect and maltreatment. How long did these children live in such disgusting circumstances without due care and attention?

In the meanwhile, the couple sit in jail, where they belong, awaiting their court appearance. The children have been removed from their care, and one can only hope that these suffering children will be placed in the care of a loving family dedicated to fulfilling the emotional and practical needs of the young, to help them find their place in life.

Portuguese Roma?

"I'm still having trouble sleeping, it was a horrifying sight, seeing this little girl in her own excrement, not able to hold up her head, white as a sheet.
"We were deeply shocked because she didn't find this abnormal. We told her to remove the little girl [from the trunk] and give her something to drink right away."
Guillaume Iguacel, mechanic

Seems it might be time to give Europe's Roma a break. They raise their children in poverty, vulnerable to degraded living conditions and the contempt of the general society which views them as expendable, not fit for genteel company. Deserving of their state of unemployed welfare-seeking. A society and a culture whose customs and values are not fit to mingle with decent people.

Where the greater society suspects child abduction and human trafficking if a dark-hued mother is seen with a light-skinned child. A condition that clearly marks the adult as a criminal, and the child needing rescue from the malevolent keep of the only family she has ever known, to be taken from the parents who love her. Even if albinism created a genetic inheritance of light skin, or a child was given to parents whose biological parents pleaded for them to care for her.

In giving the Roma a temporary break from accusations, perhaps it's time to mark all Portuguese as cruelly child-abusing. Since a Portuguese mother of  three children, two boys aged nine and ten, and a four-year-old girl, also gave birth to a fourth child. Whom she decided -- on giving birth on her own, without, she claims, her husband suspecting she was pregnant -- not to produce; to hide, and where else than the trunk of the family car.

There she kept the baby, unclothed, uncovered, unloved and neglected, never taking it out of the car trunk for any reason.  "The car always stayed outside at night so if the little girl was inside it, we didn't see anything" said one neighbour in the couple's village of Brignac-la-Plaine, Correze, in France.

The condition of the child was discovered by automobile mechanics who were repairing the vehicle. Hearing strange noises from the trunk that the mother claimed were emanating from "toys" in the vehicle, they insisted on opening the trunk. And there they saw a small, dehydrated, feverish child, naked, lying in excrement she had extruded.

They called paramedics who took the two-year-old child to a hospital. "It appears that the child had been hidden from her birth, and even worse is seriously retarded", explained the prosecutor in nearby Brive-La-Gaillarde. The child's height, weight and mental development did not reflect normal conditions, appropriate to her chronological age. Nor can she speak. "It's a situation that defies the imagination", he said.

How can it be wondered that the child hasn't developed normally  -- physically, mentally. The baby had no exposure to normal child care, no opportunities to develop normally. If the child survives its ordeal it is possible that at her age steps can still be taken to encourage normal growth and human development.

She may be somewhat retarded in development, it may take awhile, but it is still possible that with the love and attention and emotional investment of a caring family she will develop. Unsurprisingly the couple's other three children have been taken into care.

The father, the mother claimed, was kept in the dark about the presence of the baby in the car trunk. Knowing nothing of her birth or of her presence, or her condition. An unemployed builder whom the mother appeared not to want to burden with the reality of another mouth to feed. So while the child may have been fed, it would not have been generously.

One must ask of the intelligence, the emotional stability, the psychological state of a woman who could endure the very thought of depriving a helpless child of comfort, warmth, love and care. The police were unable to question the father when he was taken into custody, since they claim him to have been inebriated.

"We didn't have much contact with them. She barely said hello, and they didn't really want to integrate into the neighbourhood. How could we have known?" said a pensioner living opposite the couple. How indeed....

Clearly, the Portuguese have much to answer for....

Gross Negligence, Failure, Agency Child Abuse

An institution created and whose agenda is related to the safeguarding of children from harm, removing them from abusive home situations and ensuring that they are placed in alternate, caring and responsible family environments is generally held in high esteem within the society where they operate. It is simply an unfortunate fact of life that all too often children are born to parents who are incapable of good parenting. People who have no idea and no real interest in giving their children the love and emotional support and direction they require. People who all too often brutalize their children.

In transferring abused and neglected children to the care of others willing to offer the kind of warmth and care absent from the original family situation, society trusts that the foster parents or adoptive parents will be true to their word. In the case of Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman, grandparents of children who their daughter Yvonne Kidman was deemed unable to care for with her husband and father of the children Richard Baldwin, a horrible error in judgement of vast proportions was made when the young couple's children were removed from their care and given into the care of their grandparents.

At a coroner's inquest in Ontario into the death of five-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin, their mother was asked by a lawyer representing the little deliberately-starved boy's siblings if she knew that the Catholic Children's Aid had taken two of her own half-siblings into custody as Crown wards when they had been beaten so badly by her father that they had to be hospitalized. These were children from an earlier marriage of Yvonne Kidman's mother. Since she was only one year old herself at the time, she had no idea.

Nor did she have any idea that her mother, the woman who had slowly starved her child to death, had been responsible for the death of a sibling younger than herself. And despite that her mother Elva Bottineau and her father Norman Kidman, now serving sentences for murder of Yvonne Kidman's little boy had been responsible for the death of one of her own infants, and her husband had been charged and found guilty of molesting and beating another two of her children, she was allowed to retain Yvonne and her two sisters when they were as young as four, five and three years of age.

Not only was this child-abusing couple permitted to retain custody of their three little girls after violence committed against their other children, they were approved as "a day foster mom", when other vulnerable children in the presumed care of the Catholic Children's Aid Society were placed in Elva Bottineau's care. It is not that the CCAS had no files to check back on; they simply didn't bother. Had someone thought to check those files they would have revealed the depth of these two adults' criminal child-abusing past.

"If 'd known all this about my parents", said Yvonne Kidman, "my kids would not have gone there. I'm sorry it's very sickening", she said. Nor did she know that her mother connived against her as a capable mother to her own children. This is a family that lived as a perpetual welfare case, living in genteel poverty, on welfare and in assisted housing. Yvonne Kidman gave birth to Jeffrey when she was 19, and he was the third of her children with Richard Baldwin. They had no idea whatever of what constituted good parenting, for they had no real role models.

All of Nicole Kidman's children were removed from her care, made wards of the CCSA who decided that their grandmother -- who diligently conspired against her own daughter as a suitable mother, urging that the children be taken from her -- was a suitable alternative for foster care. The children may have been neglected in some ways, with their parents, but they were well fed. It was when they were in the care of their grandmother that they became malnourished. Two of the children were horribly abused and faced gradual starvation.

All four of Yvonne Kidman's children with her husband Richard Baldwin, inept and inadequate parents that they appeared to be, were taken from them and eventually placed with Yvonne Kidman's own mother, one by one, until the young couple was left with none of their children. For them the saving grace was that they would be able to see their children from time to time. But they were not permitted to go to the upstairs bedroom where Jeffrey and his year-older sister were kept often locked up and wasting away mired in their own waste.

Family Photo

A family photo of three-year-old Jeffrey Baldwin, at his grandparents' home in east end Toronto. He died Nov. 30, 2002, when he was five years old, of a lethal combination of pneumonia and septic shock, the underlying cause profound and protracted starvation. 

Until the child's death from pneumonia, septic shock and chronic starvation.

Unfit

There is just no end, it seems, of these dreadful trials where the most odious child abuse is revealed to the public. It is almost impossible to fathom that a man would act out violently toward his seven-week-old baby. So consistently and so violently as to create a future for the child that is utterly bereft of normalcy. Inflicting upon the child blindness, delayed intelligence and an utterly bleak future. That child, now three years of age, is blind, cannot speak other than the most basic sounds.

This is 'Jay' as a baby. He is now three years old.

The little boy, whose full name is understandably withheld is unable to stand or walk without assistance. As a baby he suffered catastrophic brain injury. It is his father who is now on trial in Toronto. He has pleaded not guilty to aggravated assault and an additional two offences with respect to the injuries sustained by the child. And one count of assault against his former common-law wife, the baby's mother.

Joao (John) Rosa is now 23 years of age. When his child was born he was 19, the child's mother 18 years of age. The child's mother's family disapproved of her choice of a partner in life, and she was estranged from them. There were no neglect charges lodged against the mother. When they moved in together, they had a little two-bedroom apartment, and the young woman worked, while John Rosa did not.

John Rosa in 361 University Ave. court Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013. (Pam Davies sketch)

Her common-law partner was a lay-about. She worked until the baby was born. While he did nothing other than play video games and hang out with his pals. When the baby was born they lived on welfare. While she became a housewife and caring mother, he indulged himself however he wished. While controlling everything she did; whom she could see, how she should dress, and she obeyed.

They had arguments, and he began to be violent with her. He would fling her about. Once he punched her in the stomach, tried to choke her and kicked her where she had stitches from the delivery of their child. He also began banging the baby about discreetly, when she wasn't around, although noticing a bruise or two she queried him and he denied, denied.

One day the baby was unresponsive. She fed the baby through a dropper, bathed it, but the baby hardly responded. His father had developed a habit of tossing the 7-week-old baby into the air, terrifying the infant, but when the mother demanded he cease, he simply laughed. She explained he wasn't yet old enough for that kind of treatment, to little avail.

The baby failed to wake for his usual night-time feeding and in the morning he was feverish. She informed her partner they would have to take the baby to hospital. He simply continued palling about with his friends, finally came up to the apartment, demanded dinner, and had a shower. And then acquiesced to driving the baby to Sick Children's Hospital.

Where doctors examining the baby found him with seven broken ribs, four broken leg bones, bleeding in his eyes and brain. And a skull fracture "almost from ear to ear", in the description of the trial prosecutor. Feverish work on the part of the medical staff saved the baby from imminent death.
Six weeks later, on his release from hospital he was given over to the care of a child-welfare agency.

Now three years of age, he lives with a foster mother who is also a nurse. His mother has supervised visits. She is expecting another baby, this one with a new boyfriend.

The Children's Monster

"He took us out for movies and candies and pizza.
"It was almost an instant transformation. Because (once) he had guardianship it was like, 'Now you're mine and nobody can stop me. We had to eat in a certain amount of time and if not he would hit us right off the chairs.
"That's when he tried to teach me how to masturbate. He was making me touch myself, and then he said, 'No, I'll show you how to do it while you eat'."
Germaine Gallant, 41, Ottawa

"He brought me in the room and said, 'I'm going to show you what happens in a normal family.' Just like that. He pulled down his pants and kind of nudged me toward him. He had brainwashed me into thinking that this is the way that families show love.
"I fought back when I turned 13. I told him he wasn't going to touch me again."
Johanne Simard, 40, Ottawa

Sisters Johanne (left) and Germaine, then four and five years old, just before they were taken into the care of their uncle and abuser: Gilles Simard.  Photograph by: Julie Oliver, Ottawa Citizen

"She was crying about a nervous breakdown that day. She said, 'You're going to live with your uncle for a while. I can't take nothing no more." And that's when the two little girls, sisters, learned in 1978 that life was about to change for them. They would be living temporarily with their very favourite uncle "Beaver". That is when soon afterward the little girls learned some life lessons.

Beginning with food deprivation, beatings, sponge baths and sexual interference. That would eventually lead to rape. They lived with their uncle for about five years, learning life's lessons. Games of hide-and-seek for example; fun under ordinary circumstances, and horrifying torture for the little girls who found this to be a game they really would far have preferred not to play. "I'd get spankings if I got caught too fast."

Uncle Beaver taught his little nieces that if they wanted to eat they would have to please him first. Joanne's memory is vague on how old she was when she was first ordered to perform oral sex. Her sister says the horribly atrocious experiences with sexual maulings began when they were five and seven years old.And these are the conditions in which the two little girls lived for the next five years of their lives.

They were traumatized by their experience. And unable to share their lives afterward together, when they became older. Each has a family of her own, with two children apiece, four boys, ranging in age from their early teens to early 20s. They decided one day, independently of one another, to come forward with their story. They hadn't communicated with one another for years.

But they had seen a news item of a Gilles Simard, a man who drove transport trucks, taxis and even ferried children with special needs around for a company specializing in that kind of social service. He had been arrested in 2010 for sharing child exploitation files online. On investigation police discovered a collection of almost 25,000 videos and more than 5,500 graphic images of children being sexually assaulted.

The man claimed to have just fallen into the situation, after having discovered images online. They awakened a latent pedophilia streak in him, poor man, he was ill and needed treatment. His story elicited some sympathy from a judge who sentenced him to two years less a day. Unaware of the man's adventures in violating the dignity, human rights and childhood of his two little nieces. Knowing only that Simard had fallen into an online child pornography trap.

After Johanne and Germaine testified at a preliminary hearing things changed. Their uncle pleaded guilty to a number of charges brought against him then, including incest, rape, sexual assault, gross indecency and assault causing bodily harm. The girls, women now with grown families of their own, spoke of how empowering it felt to get their uncle's name "out there".

"Before, I couldn't even say a word without breaking into tears", said Johanne. "To be able to have a relationship with her kids (sister Germaine) for her to have a relationship with mine, it just means a lot to me. This is the most we've been together since we were kids."

Stupendously, Criminally Inept

"You see something like this and ... it's just soul-destroying. It was the complete and utter destruction of dignity to any child, or human being, in my opinion.
"No one cared."
Paramedic Marc Dugas

The Ontario Coroner has called an inquest into the death of Jeffrey Baldwin.

"However, after the grandparents were granted custody of each child by the court, the (CCAS) closed their file and no worker oversaw or checked in on the family.
"Moreover, no worker performed any background checks on Elva and Norman prior to the transfer of a child -- no criminal record checks and no internal checks of past Society files.
"Had proper checks been done, they would have revealed a horrific history of incapable parenting and child abuse ... including past criminal convictions."
Jill Witkin, counsel to the coroner

These revelations are taking place during an inquest into the death of a desperately neglected and horribly abused child approaching his sixth birthday, who was in the loving custody of his maternal grandparents, Elva Bottineau and Norman Kidman. Their concern for the child was such that when he died he weighed 21 pounds, his death attributed to bacterial bronchopneumona, a side-effect of chronic starvation.

Little Jeffrey Baldwin was taken from the care of his parents, and he along with his three siblings, were given over by the courts into the capable hands of their mother's parents, in 2000. Back in June of 1970 his grandmother was convicted of assault causing bodily harm in the death of a baby daughter, five months old. Then nineteen years of age, Elva Bottineau was sentenced to a year's probation.

Her husband, Norman Kidman was convicted in 1978 of two counts of assault causing bodily harm inflicted by him on two of Bottineau's children, five and six, from an earlier relationship. And he was sentenced at that time to two years' probation, fined $150 for each offence. Little Jeffrey's mother Yvonne Kidman had been sexually abused by her father as a child.

All of this sordid data was available had anyone thought to look for it. But no one did. Not the Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto which was involved in the family's situation, nor the York Region Children's Aid Society which had taken custody of Yvonne Kidman's newborn baby very soon after her parents had been given custody of Jeffrey and his little sister.

The Toronto Police Service had been asked by the York agency for background checks on the Bottineau-Kidmans. "There appears to have been no response to the request and no followup" commented Ms. Witkin. Workers from the Toronto CAS went to the home and "the children were assessed together and found to be healthy and safe", and the file was closed.

Jeffrey died on November 30, 2002. He was covered in bruises and crusted-over sores. The child's belly was distended, his joints swollen, and his limbs were skeletal. He and his sister were imprisoned in a locked, unheated room. No one bothered exercising any level of hygiene to maintain the children in a clean and healthy state.

Like abused, neglected and overlooked household pets, their food was dumped in a bowl, placed on a mat for them to consume. The corner where they ate from a bowl sitting on a mat on the floor was fondly named "the pig corner", by their loving grandparents.

The function of the inquest over a decade after the death of a helpless little boy is to come to a conclusion on the preventability of deaths. To focus the community on what transpires behind closed doors, and just incidentally, pause in reflection over the usefulness to vulnerable children of child welfare groups who have failed in their responsible functioning.

The purpose of the inquest, stated Dr. Peter Clark, the coroner presiding, is "that the death of no one of its members[the community] is overlooked, concealed or ignored".  At the inquest the agency is represented by a lawyer. Another lawyer is there also, acting for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Local 2190, representing 315 Catholic Children's Aid Society of Toronto child-welfare workers.

Nice that their interests are being looked after. Tragic beyond measure that some of them failed so spectacularly in their professional calling to look after the interests of young children whose own family preyed horrendously upon them, subjecting them to pain and misery instead of loving support. It would be nice to think that this type of tragedy is a one-off. It's painful to know it is not.

In 2006 the grandparents of little Jeffrey Baldwin were convicted of 2nd-degree murder, sentenced to 22 (Elva Bottineau) and 20 (Norman Kidman) years in prison.

Yemen: Eight Year-Old Girl Dies on her Wedding Night

Outrage as child bride dies from internal injuries after being married off to a man more than five times her age.

By Ari Soffer -- Arutz Sheva 7

First Publish: 9/9/2013, 9:04 PM

(Illustration) Yemeni girls in a refugee camp

Reuters

 

A girl of eight years old has died after suffering internal injuries on the night of her arranged marriage - to a man more than five times her age.

The young girl, named only as Rawan, died in the tribal region of Hardh in northwestern Yemen, according to the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Watan.

According to Gulf News, she died after suffering a tear to her genitals and due to severe bleeding.
There have been calls to arrest her family and husband, who was reportedly 40 years old, as activists demand an end to the practice of child marriages in the Middle East's poorest country.

Even some of those more sympathetic to prevailing cultural norms in the region voiced their disgust, with one blogger lamenting:

"Her family and her groom could have waited for some time before having this marriage. It was not fair at all and the marriage should not have happened even if some tribes believe that it is a good custom."

The issue of Yemeni child brides has gained growing prominence in recent years, amid international calls to end the practice. In July, the plight of one child bride-to-be made headlines after she recorded her dramatic escape from her family, along with a heartbreaking account of the struggle she and many girls like her regularly face.

According to the United Nations, one in nine girls in developing countries is married, often forcibly, by the age of 15. UN estimates state that if current trends continue, there will be approximately 14.2 million child brides by 2020.

Yemen is one of the worst offenders, where child marriages are seen as completely normal, the result of a combination of poverty, Islamic conservatism and a highly patriarchal society.

Tragically, though perhaps unsurprisingly, Yemen also has one of the highest rates of death at childbirth in the world.

Tags: Yemen ,Child abuse ,child brides

Unfortunate Realities

When people are in anguished pain, they want some relief from their suffering. When a child dies, preferring to voluntarily surrender life to the expedient of suicide, because life seems just too much to bear, a sense of guilt infuses all of society. Someone is surely to blame, the reason for that child's abandonment of life must be sought out, and the accused must carry the stigma of responsibility. There are times when a single cause is discovered and relief is found from the emotional dungeon of despair.

And then there are those times when the reasons are numerous, intertwined, and confusing. Where the victim of the tragedy that ensued out of what might be construed as a deviation of a normal rite of passage to social maturity caused shame and a social outcasting of someone who like everyone else wants to 'fit in' be just like everyone else finds herself the subject of universal scorn among her peers. The fault, if such can be said, can be found in personality, circumstances and opportunity.

Rehtaeh Parsons is shown in a handout photo from the Facebook tribute page "Angel Rehtaeh." The RCMP say they have made two arrests in the case of Rehtaeh Parsons, the 17-year-old Halifax girl who was taken off life-support following a suicide attempt in April.    Photograph by: Handout, Facebook, THE CANADIAN PRESS

 

Grieving parents of a 17-year-old girl, raised in a culture and a society where sexual experimentation sometimes goes beyond experiment into practise and in the process brings shame to girls, want to find someone to blame. Where else to look but at those whose participation in a social event led them to a situation where alcohol sufficiently loosened inhibitions to the point where mutual acquiescence to sex benefited them?

Perhaps the parents of all concerned were consumed with guilt that they knew very well from their own experiences that the formula of youth, hormones, sex, alcohol and social partying could result in an orgy of distraction and compulsion. And while knowing, do nothing to forewarn, to chaperone, to themselves take guiding parental responsibility. In the case of Rehteah Parsons, who appealed for a stop to the shaming and the Internet circulation of a cellphone video that disgraced her, there are no easy solutions.

She is dead by her own hand, badgered, ridiculed and shamed as representing someone she had no wish to be, a "slut". At a party of her peers where young people mingled, listened to music, drank alcohol and flirted, daring one another, enticing each other, and some breaking off to isolate themselves in upstairs home bedrooms, Rehteah Parsons was a drunk, giggling and willing participant in sex; group sex actually.

Her best friend, with a more level, self-preserving mindset, tried to persuade Rehteah to leave the bedroom where she lay naked with several boys, but she refused. That friend left the premises and brought her mother back with her, and neither was able to persuade Rehteah to leave. Whom to blame? There was no rape, as Rehteah's desperately bereaved parents wanted to believe, and consequently no young men to shame and blame and place on trial for the death of their daughter.

There was, however, the circulation of a cellphone video on social media that serviced quite well to appeal to the mean streak in most people, who enjoy seeing the social alienation that can be brought upon others victimized by misfortune and circumstances often beyond their control. Rehteah did not enjoy being an object of derision, her pleas that these things halt and desist went unanswered. She responded by taking steps to put a stop to her own very personal anguish.

The only criminal charges left to be exercised to help society and mourning parents exorcise their demons is to charge three young men with the crime of circulating child pornography, victims of their very own misfortune.

From Zoo To Retail Neglect

People are incredibly careless. Unfortunately when people in authority are careless there are sometimes dreadful casualties as a result. In a moment of carelessness, an inability to logically assess a situation and imagine what could possibly go awry, two very young boys are dead. Because nothing had gone wrong up until that fateful night when a large snake got loose and did what nature had intended it to do, it seems those who had the care and responsibility of two little boys never envisaged what might happen - and did.

Authorities in the New Brunswick town of Campbellton had received a number of complaints regarding the operation of the Reptile Ocean shop that catered to lovers of reptiles. Some of whom were repulsed at the condition in which those reptiles were kept along with the state of their health. Not only were municipal authorities seemingly disinterested in responding to those complaints, no one seemed interested in determining whether it was legal to keep an African rock python, assuming it was. Parents are in position of authority over their children; it is similarly assumed they are alert to the best interests of their children's welfare.

This is the text dating from 2009 describing the entry of African rock pythons that began to invade the Florida Everglades, along with a few other constrictor-type snakes not native to North America:

Six African rock pythons have been found in Florida since 2002. More troubling, a pregnant female and two hatchlings have been found, which means the aggressive reptiles have set up house.
More dangerous than even Burmese pythons—which are known to eat alligators (alligator-python picture)—the African pythons are "so mean, they come out of the egg striking," said Kenneth Krysko, senior herpetologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History in Gainesville.
"This is just one vicious animal."

And this is what was recently in the news of snake invasions in the Florida Everglades:

The biggest Burmese python ever caught in Florida — 17 feet, 7 inches (5.18 metres) long and 164 1/2 pounds (74.4 kilograms) — was found in Everglades National Park, the University of Florida announced Monday.

REUTERS/Florida Museum of Natural History at University of Florida/Handout   Researchers 
 transport the largest Burmese python found to date in Florida in preparation to examine its 
internal anatomy in this still image taken from video at the Florida Museum of Natural History 
in Gainesville, Florida.

Tens of thousands of Burmese pythons are believed to be living in the Everglades, where they thrive in the warm, humid climate. While many were apparently released by their owners, others may have escaped from pet shops during Hurricane Andrew in 1992 and have been reproducing ever since.
The snakes kill their prey by coiling around it and suffocating it. They have been known to swallow animals as large as deer and alligators.

Constrictors crush their prey. They kill them by suffocating them; when the struggling has ceased, they slowly crush them beyond death. As the muscularly coiled body applies additional pressure, bones crack, so that no resistance can be met when the giant snake unhinges its jaws and proceed to swallow its prey whole, slowly digesting it over a prolonged period of time to nourish its body to enable it to grow ever larger.

What constrictors are capable of doing can be no secret to anyone who professes to be a connoisseur of reptiles. Yet knowing what such a beast is capable of, and should be respected for -- its capacity to wreak havoc on any animal -- seems to have eluded the attention of Jean-Claude Savoie, owner of the Reptile Ocean enterprise in Campbellton, New Brunswick.

Mr. Savoie appears to have been fascinated with reptiles, without fully understanding their natural habits. He is certainly not alone in this. People become enamoured of the idea of having in their possession such animals -- as though they represent pets that can be domesticated -- reptiles like alligators and these giant species of dangerous snakes, while they seem incapable of understanding the danger they represent to human life.

The condition of the reptiles kept by Reptile Ocean has come under question; it would appear there were complaints of animal abuse, of sick animals not cared for, by people who bought them from the source and discovered them to have been maltreated. Evidently nothing was done to alter the situation.

And Mr. Savoie saw fit to keep his African rock python, 14 to 16 feet long and close to 100 pounds in an 'enclosure' upstairs over his shop, in his private personal apartment where he lived with his son. His son's playmates who live nearby, four and seven years of age, Noah and Connor Barthe, were visiting and having a sleep-over. Mourning relatives later said the two little boys had a lovely day before meeting death; they went swimming, enjoyed a barbecue, played with their best friend.

 

July 2013 photo of Noah Barthe and Connor Barthe. Facebook

 

The snake appears to have manoeuvred its way out of the enclosure and from there entered the building's ventilation system. The massive snake's weight caused it to fall through the ceiling of the room where the two little boys were sleeping. The theory is that the snake wound itself around one of the little boys and the other woke, and tried to pull his brother away, leading the snake to wind around the second little boy as well, smothering them both. An autopsy is to be conducted.

Campbellton's mayor, while mourning the deaths, advised that there was nothing illegal in the ownership of the snake, that all the permits for Reptile Ocean were in order.  What happened was an unfortunate accident, a tragedy of immense proportions, but an accident. Well, it certainly was that. But charges may yet be laid against Mr. Savoie.

It would appear his ownership of an African rock snake was not at all authorized, it represented a clear illegality. The breed is not included on the Exotic Wildlife Registry for New Brunswick, according to the province's Department of Natural Resources. The province never issues permits "to keep an illegal exotic animal as a pet."


No problem, though in other municipalities and provinces and states in North America.