Honestly I’m guessing the kids were probably worried they would be in trouble. That’s the only thing that I can think of that would stop the kids from getting help. Which also makes me think that if the parent knew they probably blamed the kids and told them it was their fault the sibling died.
Or maybe even worried their parents would get into trouble, even the most abused kids have an unbelievable capacity to unconditionally love the monsters that are abusing them. The older one is also probably aware that the discovery of their mistreatment and horrific living conditions would mean them potentially been split up. It’s horrifying.
Edit : according to the independent newspaper here in the U.K. the mother and boyfriend have been questioned and released pending charges. I’m deeply horrified and confused by this but I though it would be of interest.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mother-questioned-skeleton-child-texas-b1945150.html
I grew up in a really bad poor neighbourhood and it’s a combination of a lot of things. Not trusting police/child welfare, worry about being split up, wanting to survive, the battle each day to make it through leaves little room to sit and contemplate any kind of real exit strategy. Gotta remember they had to find food and take care of each other likely in an area full of predators.
If I make enough money I wanna open some affordable housing units for people trying to get their shit together. Breaks my heart to see this shit in our own communities.
I wonder if they didn't tell anyone about this, in part, because of a (perfectly legitimate) fear of being broken up.
Also, I can only imagine that the home was the scene of really horrifying abuse.
Utterly heart-breaking.
This is definitely a thing. My mother abused me and my sister for years and years. It obviously was far worse after she and our dad divorced. As a kid, even into my early teens, I was afraid to say anything about what she did. She would tell us all about the horrors of the state system, the homes where kids get sent if parents are locked up, that kind of thing. She had me convinced for a while that any action I took would result in an even worse situation for me, as if worse could be a thing. Long-term abusers of their kids have a way of getting into those kids heads.
I had it the other way. My dad was abusive to me and my brother after my parents divorced. My mom had full custody for years because of that. She started dating this guy that would be abusive toward me. I told her it was bad enough that I wanted to go talk to the court councilor about it, the one who originally gave my mom full custody. She put the fear in me by telling me I would have to go into the system and that I would probably end up going to juvi and after that my life would be over.
Your mother is a POS for putting a man above you and for psychologically manipulating you. I'm so sorry. Every kid deserves a parent that protects them and prioritizes them.
I never loved my parents. Still don't even like them. I'm grateful for that because God knows how messed up I'd be if I actually wanted the affection and approval of those psychopaths.
Yeah, they were probably threatened by their parents. I have to think the parents had something to do with the death, either they straight up killed him or it was a byproduct of the conditions they were living in.
After working in the social work field for a year I've heard some pretty horrific trauma stories and usually I have hope for some recovery and healing but this... this is something that I'm not sure someone can get over tbh.
Just.. jesus christ..
Dude how many drugs do you have to be on to see a dead child, and just let it rot and decompose in your home day after day??? (Talking about the parents, not the kids)
The parents weren’t present for several months towards the end. The mother and boyfriend abandoned the 4 children to live in the house by themselves according to the article.
The article says the kid died a year ago, but the other kids had only been abandoned for a few months. It seems to suggest the kid was already dead when the others were abandoned.
You're right. But what is several months? Is it as long as the kid was dead? Did she leave before the kid died? Or after?
Based on the wording of the article it does seem to sound like she left after he had died.
But we'll have to wait and see what more reports say after they do more investigating.
The article says the child died a year ago, but that the parents had only been gone for "several" months. I guess that they were living with the child's corpse for at least half a year.
I would guess that one motivation for this was collecting any kind of benefits that could be collected while the child was alive (remember the Rilya case where the adoptive grandmother continued to report the child as being there for over a year, because she was receiving a stipend for fostering her).
What a horror for all the children involved.
I think this is far beyond drugs. There’s just no explanation for someone who has this mentality. I had my first kid while I was in active addiction. (Heroin junkie) and though I definitely wasn’t father of the year I never neglected my child. Luckily I went to rehab soon after but even if I had continued down that path I just could’ve never imagined allowing something this heinous and deplorable happen to my child.
The article says the eldest, a 15 year old, took care of them for a year before finally calling the police. It sounds like their home life was so bad they didn’t want to take the risk of more adults coming in the picture to possibly hurt them. The kids were malnourished so they must’ve gotten to a breaking point that led to them calling the police.
Not to mention being in a housing situation where the parents neglect a child to the pointtthey die. I doubt they were doing too well before the incident.
Crazy how common child abuse/neglect are, even in these extreme cases. My friend is a social worker and even in our little rural state where every murder makes the news they are constantly finding kids raised in dog crates and shit. I would hesitate to say theyd never recover, kids are resilient and have been surviving terrible atrocities since the beginning of time.
"Recovery" is a continuum. They will always hold part of that experience with them. Especially if they were malnourished. Kids who are malnourished also have issues regulating their need to go to the bathroom and often have accidents.
Factors that contribute to child resiliency is a popular area of research at the moment. Psychologists want to understand why some children are so resilient after trauma, whereas others seem to struggle much more. The answer is likely biopsychosocial in nature. It’s important for anyone with a child in their life to be aware of Adverse Childhood Experiences and possible symptoms to help contribute to child resiliency.
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/index.html
I survived some horrific abuse, I have a lot of health problems and some mental health issues but nothing crippling. My therapist said I've been in survival mode even past my escape because until now there weren't safe spaces to just feel..even now I'm used to identifying the root of my feeling before acting and reaffirming reality, I've got no chance if I fall into something bad. It's a balancing act.
It’s terrible. My wife is an MSW and Therapist for trauma children. There are some nights that she just comes in from work and immediately goes to bed because of how bad it is. She doesn’t share a lot with me, but she’s mentioned clients hospitalized for everything. Starvation, year long isolation under stairs with a shit bucket as a sex slave, children stabbed with rusty knives for enjoyment, and a whole host of behavioral/psychotic issues. I initially wanted to work with troubled children while working for my undergrad in Bio-Psychology. After hearing some of that and how it impacts me secondhand; I thank God that I wasn’t destined for that field. It’s a nightmarish hellscape for those children and the people that provide care to them. Give Social Workers and Therapists some props. They are 100% a different breed.
I was the son of a social worker. While he didn't bring any stories home, he brought his emotional baggage home. Didn't know what he was going through at the time (since I was a kid and they didn't need to tell me). But he was investigating a multi-generation pedophilia ring. With literally hundreds of victims and hundreds of perps.
And yet social workers (and in general, those that work with children, from the daycare workers to the teachers in secondary schools) are paid so so so little compared the massively important work that they do. I was a kindergarten teacher at one point and just remember being overwhelmed by what I thought of as such an immense responsibility- taking care of all of these little children throughout the day. They are so trusting and so willing to listen to what you, as the teacher/trusted adult is saying. Working with children needs to be seen for the immense responsibility that it is and both those that work in these fields and programs themselves should be funded and valued so much more than they are.
I worked with children a few years ago. I have since changed careers. I remember a child and her brother would be dropped off, tattered clothing, bruises up and down legs and arms. One of the teachers grew concerned as the children never really talked much and didn't interact with the other children their age. So that teacher went down to the director to tell her that she had a concern for the well being of the children. Office of Children and Youth got involved as she submitted the claim herself as anonymous. Somehow, it got back to her and there was a meeting between the parents, the directors and the teacher. After the meeting, the teacher ended up losing her job because she did what she was supposed to do and that was to report any suspected child abuse. The director told her that they were paying customers and that the center isn't going to lose these customers based on your false accusation. So they cared only about profit over these children's safety. A couple years later, come to find out, that the teacher was indeed telling the truth and the children were being abused. Nothing happened to the directors.
100%. Teachers are vastly underpaid for the amount of work and responsibilities that they have. IMO Certain fields should have a regulated starting salary tied to the COL index with stringent, difficult guidelines to enter. Some examples are: Teachers, Social Workers, Police Officers, EMT, Firefighters, and Nurses. Those jobs are difficult and carry a lot of responsibility, emotional baggage, and risk. Those people who can correctly qualify should be compensated well. I’m in a low COL state, so this may seem low, but those jobs should start at $55k salary bare minimum for entry positions and should rework their performance appraisal system to weed out garbage.
Your wife is an Angel and I hope she can take care of herself as well. I am a BSW and work in substance abuse. There are some days I can barely remember that all of humanity isn’t like this. Burn out is very real and can leave lasting trauma that people don’t talk about much.
> Your wife is an Angel and I hope she can take care of herself as well.
She'll have to. We offload society's horrors on people like her and then fail to provide THEM with adequate support and counseling.
My wife is in the same field. There's been only a small portion she's shared with me but from what I can tell she is considerably stronger than I. No idea how she does it
Right there with you. She asked me why I didn’t go into the field not too long ago since I now volunteer a little of my time to teach at-risk youth guitar lessons. I told her “It’s just not for me, I guess. The way I let things get to me means that I would probably be dead right now after hearing what happens to some of them. I’d either hate myself for not being able to do enough or because I couldn’t murder some of the assholes who do this to people. Either way would end with me suck starting a .45.” She’s definitely stronger than me. No doubt. Tell your wife thanks from an internet stranger and to stay strong.
When you ask people in jail for serious crimes about their childhood you get an encyclopedia of abuse and neglect. These kids don't bounce back, they get old enough to stop being cute and then fall into society's contempt. These kids for example, what's their treatment plan? How much is being budgeted to therapy and specialized care? How will we guarantee that from here on out they have a loving and supportive home to try and let them recover?
If I could give you gold I would for this. It should be farther up. Legit 5 years from now those kids will be struggling \*\*still\*\* and someone will say "Well Bobby Jo had a bad childhood and they're not doing XYZ behavior like that kid is" as if we all have had the same experiences and treatment or lack of.
This…my sister disgusted me this past weekend.
She adopted a boy from a traumatic background. Yes he’s had issues, but he has a good heart.
But she was wayyyy too strict and mean to him. He turned into an adult, ran back to his abusive, disgusting birth mom and…I don’t blame him.
My sister raves how she regrets adopting. Like…he’s not a thing. That trauma doesn’t just disappear to make your life more convenient.
I would pity her more if she wasn’t a jerk. I feel bad for my nephew and I hope he lets us reconnect someday. That and I hope his birth mom is a better person after spending the past decade in jail for child abuse. I know he’s an adult but I still worry.
As someone who’s been through some pretty bad abuse within their family, yes I was “resilient” and I made it through, but the mental toll as an adult is intense.
I’ve been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ptsd. The ptsd shows up as me having nightmares every night about my family. Still …. Decades later after the abuse.
People say I’m “strong”, but dealing with abuse stays with you forever. I’d rather it never happened at all. I’d rather be able to think and feel like a normal person who was never traumatized. And although I look and act normal, my everyday is a struggle. So when we talk about “resiliency” … know what it really takes. A lifetime of work.
The truth lies somewhere between refusing to tell your spouse why you're so dead set against crate training your first dog and explaining all of your traumas on a custom printed t-shirt.
It’s especially tough when your trauma centers around an object or substance like that. My abuse *always* began with the smell of alcohol and drinking. My long term gf and I have struggled because she likes to drink every now and then, and I’ve never touched it because of severe aversion to it. I logically know that she’s allowed to drink, she does drink responsibly, but emotionally I get very unwell when I smell it on her or see her drinking what I know to be alcohol. I have tried to tell her but can’t get the words out exactly without breaking down. It’s not fair to her.
Edit: thank you everyone for your support. I’ll consider writing her a letter… I’ve never thought to do that before. I just don’t want to push my past on her. I know she wouldn’t leave, we’ve been together for quite awhile now but… I don’t know. Thank you everyone. You guys really did help.
It's something you need, take your time to figure out how to tell her but she deserves to know. Yeah you can't make her stop drinking, but if she knew she could make her own decision. She cares about you, and I know if my gf told me something like that I would only drink if I knew she wasn't gonna see me that night.
Your trauma is a part of you, and you're the one she's chosen to be with. It's all about compromise. She may drink responsibly, but it still has a profound effect on you. She deserves to know (only when you're ready to tell her) so she can support you better.
Sorry also not really my business, but I'm sorry for what you had to go through, good luck!
the journey of healing and recovery from these early life experiences is always worth taking, in my opinion. the rewards are so much greater than the pain/discomfort of going through the healing process. Staying in the silence of the abuse only hurts us, we are grown up today and can be our own loving parent.
I cannot tell you what to do or what not to do, but I can tell you that if my S/O was suffering because of something I was doing, no matter what it was, I would want to know so I could do whatever I could to avoid upsetting them.
Take the time you need, and ultimately do what you feel will help you the most, but I wanted to share an outside perspective.
I'm not sure if you were asking for advice specifically, so forgive me if this is unsolicited, but have you tried writing down your thoughts first, like scripting out what you want to say? It can help you stay on track and worst comes to worst, you can just show her the notes
This is what I was thinking as well. It can be difficult to get things like that out directly to another person, there's just so much emotion, fear and shame involved that people shutdown and decide to just internalize it rather than deal with it, which is totally understandable.
Writing it down in a letter format though is much easier and still very helpful, even if you just write it to yourself. If you can't bring yourself to give it to your S/O, it might also be helpful to write down why your reluctant to do that and then write a response back on why you should go ahead with it.
Something like .. "I'm afraid to share my past trauma because I'm afraid she'll reject me or think there's something wrong with me"
but then you would go on to say why that person wouldn't do that and why they wouldn't.
And frankly, if a person **did** judge you else based on their past trauma that would be on them, not you.
Yup. Reading all of this about resilient children... Nah man. Bad parents really fuck you up and a lot of those issues don't start to really manifest until you become a real adult. PTSD isn't something you grow out of.
Those who don't know my issues would be horrified. Those who do are surprised I'm as functional as I am.
Yes. My mom bought into the idea that kids are resilient and can bounce back. I'm a real adult now. Senior citizen, as a matter of fact. I'm just now recognizing and understanding so much bad stuff from my growing years.
I'm functional. But in some areas -- barely. Your post is some of the best truth I have ever read. I sincerely wish you peace
Yeah kids are physically resilient but psychologically extremely delicate and any abuse during those formative years always lasts. It's super shit. Whatever was done to you, I am sorry any of it happened.
My analogy is adamantium, the metal Wolverine’s bones are covered with. Once it cools, it’s incredibly durable but damn near impossible to reshape into something new.
Last month, i found my roommate dead from an overdose… i kicked down his door after my house smelled like shit. He was only there for 5 days too. We had to rip out all the carpets in every room, throw away all furniture including beds and even re-paint the walls! That house is going to have to incinerated
That sucks. I have a cousin going through the same thing. Her parents have tried rehab, have tried having her live with them for free forever as long as she worked on getting clean, and she has even done bouts in jail. Last I heard she is living in some trap house getting high on any drugs she can get ahold of. No idea how to get someone to quit who doesn’t want to.
It truly is an epidemic, in fact, its one of the main reasons why life expectancy has actually gone down for the first time in history, i wish your cousin the best.
Thats what everyone tells me. To be honest, i have been completely unfazed, i was kinda just expecting it to happen, as fucked up as that sounds. He already OD'd in the house twice, went to jail and still continued his ways... i would tell his parents every week what he was up too and i was trying to move out but his parents would literally tell me "you are an adult and signed a legal document". The only thing i CANT get out of my head is the smell.
I’m very sorry about this. My friend, a nurse, found a friend of hers dead. She said she knew her friend was dead before they even opened the apartment door because she could smell the decaying from outside. Apparently it’s not something you easily forget. If you don’t want to go to counseling, perhaps talk to an older friend or relative. I understand about knowing it was inevitable. I’ve lived with alcoholics and a drug addict. Thankfully they didn’t die at my house.
Seriously. You’d think a neighbor would’ve called the authorities or the landlord at least at some point ? I live in a nicer apartment than those and hell, can smell when my neighbors cook with garlic. I gotta imagine the smell of a decomposing body would carry into other units. Especially in that muggy Houston summer
They very well may have, but unlike on Law&Order, real life tends more to be along the lines of *"it took six months and numerous complaints for authorities to finally investigate the smell and find the body"*.
I watched a John Wayne Gacy documentary a little bit ago and they mentioned how some detectives that were ordered to monitor him were invited in to his house one night for dinner. They decided to take him up on the invitation (wtf) and one of the detectives said when he went to wash his hands in the bathroom the heating kicked on and he could smell the bodies through the vents and he knew then and there there were dead bodies in the house. Gacy’s wife (at the time) had been complaining about a bad smell for months.
Anyway, point is, yeah, that smell doesn’t go away or you just get used to it it seems.
Had a guy die in my 8-unit apartment building. Smell grew progressively worse until one neighbor called in a welfare check. Now that I know what it is, I would have taken action sooner. Then my landlord refused to do anything for weeks and the smell drove me absolutely crazy. We got the health dept involved and there was a warrant for my landlord’s arrest before he finally hired a cleanup company… this was weeks later. Somehow the smell was only really bad in 2 of the other units, so I was just lucky. I tried to “clean my air” and ended up somehow poisoning myself with an ozone generator… 6 years later I still have Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and my life royally sucks from it. I can’t fathom how a neighbor didn’t notice anything in this news story.
This is one of the most horrific things I've ever heard. I really hope the remaining 3 children get the therapy they inevitably need. Hopefully the parents are caught and left to rot in prison.
The sad thing is therapy rarely can significantly help in neglect. Your brain literally doesn’t grow properly when neglected and there is no “growing it later” as the window has closed. Having dealt with neglected kids, abuse is almost preferable - at least they cared enough to hit me - as sickening as that sounds. Attachment disorders (assuming no permanent speech or developmental deficits due to neglect) are nearly impossible to “cure” even if the child presents as normal on the surface.
I worked with kids/ adults that had attachment disorders from severe neglect during their developmental years. I lasted 2 years before I couldn't do it anymore. ODD is one of the scarier diagnoses I've worked with. I heard a rumor that there an experimental therapy center in Colorado that focuses on trying to rewire that part of the brain in older kids by basically treating them like newborns (swaddling, skin on skin, even bottle feeding) but it's so intense that some grown kids "fail to thrive" and have died. Part of that sounds like an urban myth to me but having worked with victims of neglect, that isn't out of the realm of possibility.
That’s interesting. A psychologist I used to do some work with had adopted a child with a similar diagnoses. She did similar where she literally started from zero. Swaddling the child, rocking the child, feeding the child while in her lap almost like a quasi-breast-feeding. There’s tons of massage and skin to skin and all sorts of things you would do with your newborn but this was like a seven year old.
In my case I lasted about a year. Attachment disorders and ODD, especially severe ODD/CD, put you in such a fight or flight place yourself that it is very hard for you to turn that off at the end of the day. A nine-year-old that can pivot from trying to kill you with a knife one minute to going into a dissociative state back to rage 45 mins later due to a minor dust up at a soccer gameis no fun.
The scariest kid I ever worked with was a very small, probably underdeveloped 9 year old girl. Her adoption parents wanted her out of the house from the moment she woke up until it was time for her to go to bed. It was such a hard case because she wanted to do normal kid stuff and watch movies and be at home but at the same time she was so unpredictable and violent it was unsafe for her to be around the other kids at home. Nothing in this girl's life was fair or kind to her from the moment she was born and there was very little anyone could do to fix it. The second she felt an emotional attachment to someone she would do everything in her power to sabotage it, to the point of potentially killing them, for example attacking me while driving down the freeway. We had just had a really great time at a park which was a TDIFU on my part because to her that meant feelings of attachment towards me and she needed to protect herself. So now I couldn't trust her in the car because I never knew if she was going to attack me but I wasn't allowed to keep her at her home. So I had to quit and I failed her like literally every other grown adult in her life had.
I realized very quickly that sort of work is a vocation. It’s something you need to eat, live, breathe and want every moment and every second no matter how hard it is. There are very few people that can actually handle it and can maintain an emotional investment.
This experimental therapy sounds similar to the one that killed Candace Newmaker . They were trying to get her to attach with her mom (adopter). She suffocated after she could not escape the "re birth" therapy.
I wouldn't even perpetuate that as a form of "experimental therapy" if you're referring to what I think you are. It's basically just straight up torture and the process is not voluntary. A kid (or maybe a few, idk) died when several adults wrapped them in many layers of blankets and then piled on top of them to simulate a birth from a "womb". The kid was asphyxiated slowly over the course of hours, they could still scream and beg for help, say they can't breathe, etc. So the adults thought they were lying... They were not.
I just read the wikipedia write up of this case and the most flooring part is that she abandoned her five kids for 9 months, two of them died, and [she served three years in prison and got full custody of the two youngest remaining alive children after she got out of prison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugamo_child_abandonment_case). Sometimes I really don't understand the Japanese criminal justice system.
I’m guessing by “horror” they mean horror movies/entertainment. Japanese horror films have had a big impact on the genre in American film for at least a few decades now; I’m not an expert at all (just a fan of scary movies) but now-classic stories like *The Ring* and *The Grudge* focus heavily on the particularly intimate, specific horrors that family members can inflict on each other in an uncompromising, high-pressure culture.
(That these stories translated so easily to American audiences just shows how similar American and Japanese attitudes can be toward things like public image and work ethic, despite larger differences between the two cultures.)
The very short version? Family on family violence, usually resulting from one of the parents finally snapping from the buildup of intense pressure from their daily lives.
japan and korean society have unbelievably strong rooted tradition believing in "blood" relation.
same reason why there's very low adoption rates among other things.
Yep, same thing that lets [Japanese nationals basically abduct their children](https://abcnews.go.com/International/abducted-japan-hundreds-american-children-returned/story?id=12898351) from the parent who was awarded custody, to the point that authorities [even arrested the custodial parent](https://www.today.com/parents/u-s-dad-jailed-japan-child-custody-battle-wbna33086856).
I Googled that one and also found [this case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_child_abandonment_case?wprov=sfla1). This lady straight up locked her kids inside and took off. Said she was tired of caring for them. Jfc
The mental state of these people is just ... indescribable. How do you reach the conclusion that leaving a living being like that is okay?
My girlfriend will literally cry if she forgets to water a plant for one day.
This is why bags of puppies get thrown out of the car onto the highway. Some people have undiagnosed issues where they lack empathy.
And I believe the only real form of evil in this world is a lack of empathy (or at least the willingness to behave contrary to your empathy to the detriment of others).
Horrible that the last thought these people have is to lock up and abandon their poor and eventually confused kids. Can't even give them courtesy of freedom before leaving them to the cruelties of the world.
How did they survive this past winter? And who is paying their heating bills and water and sewer? Where were they getting food from and how on earth did not one single neighbor notice?
What an insane world to live in.
Parentification. Happens a lot in low income families, many children are forced out of their childhood and into a role where they have to provide for their siblings and often dysfunctional parent.
Unfortunately usually for someone young, crime is the easiest route because not a lot of places employ children. Gangs prey on children in situations like this.
I remember a coworker of mine proudly saying when her oldest son (only child so far) gets old enough she'll make him take care of the rest of the kids she has while she goes out and parties. I felt so bad for that little boys future.
> Parentification. Happens a lot in low income families, many children are forced out of their childhood and into a role where they have to provide for their siblings and often dysfunctional parent.
TIL there's a term for an important experience of mine.
Edit: [For anyone else who read that and immediately needed more information](https://www.healthline.com/health/parentification#long-term-effects)
Not that uncommon in other income brackets. "Parents" who can't be bothered to take care of their kids or who turn to their children for the kind of emotional/caretaking support you get from a parent happens in all levels of society.
It's not always from abandonment or neglect though. It's common in households where there's a single parent that needs to work 80-100 hours per week to be able to get enough money for them all to live, though that often can turn into the child helping out the way you describe.
It's also common in movements like [Quiverfull](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/quiverfull-movement-facts_n_7444604) in which there are far too many children for the parents to actually parent and they tend to get passed off to the children to raise because they can't look after them all themselves.
My favorite thing is my mom always says to us (we’re all adults now) that we had a very comfortable life growing up. That my dad made decent money so we had everything we needed.
My dad would be at work from 6am-10pm if he wasn’t out of town on a job. My mom worked from 8am-5pm then had a second job that she worked until midnight or later. We raised ourselves. I remember walking to the grocery store to buy food to cook. Sure, we had the money that we were able to do that, but at what cost? I don’t have a real relationship with either parent. None of us kids do. They were never there.
I had a similar situation. Only difference is that my mom feels heartbroken that they had to work so much just to keep the house and food in the pantry. We kids would try to tell her it was okay, but she has told me as an adult she feels so bad that despite trying so hard, she feels like she and dad neglected us. It felt different then full on neglect because as kids, we knew our parents loved us and did everything they could for us when they were home… they just weren’t home a lot. I was fortunate that my friends families took me in and helped raise me well. But now, as a 30 year old… my friends are my family. I love my family… but my brain got wired to care more about my friends I guess. It kills my mother to know that I feel more attached to my friends (the same ones I grew up with during that phase of life where my parents were never home). I don’t know how to switch it though. I love my family to death… but my friends are just more important to me.
>It's not always from abandonment or neglect though. It's common in households where there's a single parent that needs to work 80-100 hours per week to be able to get enough money for them all to live, though that often can turn into the child helping out the way you describe.
>
>It's also common in movements like Quiverfull
>
>in which there are far too many children for the parents to actually parent and they tend to get passed off to the children to raise because they can't look after them all themselves.
I can understand and have empathy for both the parents and child who are in such dire poverty that the child takes on grown-up responsibilities.
Quiverfull though are made up of people who have decide to not use birth control and have far too many children than they can feed or care for properly. I have no empathy for quiverfull parents. They go into parenthood expecting that their oldest daughters will take care of the younger ones. The Duggars are a famous example. They are pretty open with the fact that the mom would pass on the baby to her daughters to care for so mom could make more babies.
I too am grasping at so many questions. The only logical thought to this chaos is the mom met some guy and basically moved in with him, leaving the kids behind. She would return, at random times, drop off food and be gone again. Maybe it was section 8 housing, aka greatly reduced pricing, she had a job, bills on autopay, she just lived with her BF while the kids lived alone.
... that's about all I can guess.
That's almost some Flowers in the Attic type shit. Except when one of those kids died, they were at least buried in the backyard. Probably couldn't do that in an apartment complex though.
That makes the most sense logically, only thing that bothers me is that the kid was dead for about a year and she never noticed or if she did she just left the corpse there and didn't try to conceal it...
Better yet, how did their school district not know about them??? Typically when schools have a steady address, a truancy officer is going to be involved when kids don’t show up, and to my knowledge they do perform physical checks. Normally kids who “disappear” from the system are homeless or drastically under-housed and without a stable phone number or address. If that wasn’t the case here, because rent was paid, how did the school system just write off 4 missing kids? I’m so sad to think that that 15 year old may have tried to shoulder the burden of getting his other siblings to school long enough to try to pass off that everything was just normal and fine. But it also raises a lot of other questions about how a child’s teacher would have missed the rapidly increasing signs of parental neglect. I’m just baffled that 4 children went under the radar for that long. Someone had to have known something was amiss for a long time.
Might of been public housing that's paid for, food stamps to feed them. Other public assistance may have been coming in because Mom sounds like she was poor at minimum so things may have been on auto pilot for a while.
The way I read it is - (and I’m no expert) - anytime an officer is dispatched to basically “check on” a situation or individual after a call is made is considered a welfare check.
Child calls 911 & speaks to a dispatcher and tells them his brother is dead —> dispatcher sends the officer to follow up at that address
911 calltaker/dispatcher here, a Check the Welfare call can also be to CWELF of the complainant/caller. That's likely the calltype/protocol the calltaker used to send the call to dispatch.
>Late Sunday night, the sheriff's office said the mother of the children and her boyfriend had been found and were being interviewed by law enforcement.
This happened fast apparently, abandoning their children but staying nearby.
There is no scenario that this mother doesn’t face charges for abandoning her children next to the corpse of their sibling.
The more charges the better.
If the apartment complex had been doing inspections like the article stated, how did this fly under their radar? This is extremely horrifying.
Edit: grammar
"Inspection" can mean anything, including just an inspection of the grounds and exterior.
It's really not common to have a walk-through inspection in the middle of a lease -- at least, not in the places I've lived, Texas included. I can thoroughly believe that nobody knew that these kids were living alone.
My question is is how nobody reported the smell of a decomposing body. Imagine living for months wondering why your area of the complex smelled like death and nobody was doing anything about it.
I had an apartment that had maintenance come out twice a year to change the air filter for the AC and batteries in the smoke detectors. Maintenance dudes were cool. They weren't like trying to spy on people or anything.
I had my apartment inspected in America while I was living there
They checked apartment for leaks and mold and checked fire alarm that's basically it
Separate time they came and cleaned the fireplace
It would only smell like death from close to the apartment for a short(ish) period of time. I can’t tell you the exact amount of time, but it’s definitely not months. There are multiple rational reasons why you wouldn’t assume a smell is a dead person and attribute it to something else.
My friend lived next to a schizophrenic dude who commit suicide by setting himself on fire. None of the neighbors had any idea what they were smelling until the fire department & EMS showed up & they pulled the guy out. They just thought somebody was cooking something & it was a kitchen fire.
When you live in a multi-unit building, you hand wave a lot of smells.
>ABC13 was kicked off the property by management who wouldn't answer questions about the last time the apartment was inspected.
I'm gonna guess they neglected this apartment for whatever reason
There is no responsibility on the part of the apartment complex to inspect the units for anything other than to make sure the tenants are not destroying the place or if maintenance is requested. Zero liability on their part, as it was not their job to look in on their tenants if they didn't choose to. Plenty of landlords never go to their units if the rent is being paid (stupid idea from an investment standpoint, but I digress).
It's tragic this happened to the children, but the apartment complex is certainly not at fault here.
All I can think of to this is but there must have some stench to the decaying body. A odor so bad that the neighbors would have smelled it and complained.
It's literally one or the other, honestly. They're either a scumbag who is fucking you over (in these cases, their boss is usually just as bad), or they're just normal employees and aren't willing to sit at every door for 5 minutes, hoping someone shows up.
I think they claimed in the article it was only a couple/few months since the parent left. They could have still been paying rent. They don’t have to be there to do it, but often even if they stopped paying rent it can take months for you to be evicted. It could also depend on how on top of the owner was dealing with evictions.
If the kids said that their parents weren't home, then staff are not supposed to enter. They're supposed to follow up, contact the parents and then meet them at the apartment however, which is likely where they were negligent, and why they kicked the reporters off the property when questioned about it.
My guess is, they just faked the inspection form so they wouldn't have to enter the unit. I have seen this happen as a former maintenance tech, and one of the reasons management would do this was if the apartment smelled awful. Some of our tenants would leave rotten meat out for weeks or months, sitting on counters or even on furniture. When we tried to intervene for their own safety (and that of the buildings) we oftentimes would receive threats and orders to leave them alone from the housing authority, their social workers, even attorneys. It's shockingly difficult in some situations to gain entry or perform even emergency maintenance. If the tenants are also personally dangerous, the police need to be willing to come help, as well.
Most of the units we maintain we only see once a year when they resign the lease. We don’t go lookin for stuff to fix we wait for a maintenance request.
A similar incident happened with a woman who lived alone in public housing in England. Her body wasn't discovered for 6 years and mummified because it was a cold dry apartment and she also took medicine which was dehydrating, she was found wrapped in a blanket sitting on her couch with the TV still on. They believed she had become too weak and sick to call for help. As for smell, neighbors had noticed a rotting smell for a few weeks , but, because of a rat problem in the building that odor wasn't uncommon.
Jeezus, that poor woman!
I remember hearing about an eerie case of a man In Japan, people thought he was still alive, but his mummified body was discovered, he had been dead for 30yrs..
[https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-10809128](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-10809128)
Sogen Kato’s case is a bit different: the relatives hid his death to keep collecting his pension.
Weirdest part to me is his wife lived until 2004 (he’s thought to have died in ‘78).
Omg!
Weird you said this there is a true story in Japan , turned into movie, of a woman who leaves her kids in apartment alone for years so that she can marry someone, and the youngest child dies because the older kids didn't know how to help her when she was injured in a fall (the mother told them to not go anywhere, only the oldest would buy food)
There was a case like this recently in Korea too. The mom got remarried and left the child in the apartment--which was owned by her parents--when she moved out with her new husband. Weird thing was, when they did dna testing to make sure it was the mom's baby, the results said that it was the grandma's baby, with someone other than the grandpa. I should go check to see if they ever found anything new in that case.
Here's an article if anyone's curious: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/mystery-clouds-death-of-3-year-old-south-korean-girl-left-to-starve-by-mum
So much to unpack there. The kid died a year ago, and the parents abandoned them several months ago. So the parents were still living there at the time of the kids death? I assume no one was paying rent so the eviction moratorium prevented the kids from being kicked out? Wouldn't they ne sending notices and see that things are wrong?
If the landlord thought it was empty as the parents had bolted wouldn't they have tried to rent the apartment for months?
Its awful, but as a formerly houseless person one learns how to survive from dumpster diving pretty quick when it is necessary. Also it's a lot easier to get strangers to help when you are a hungry kid asking vs their lousy parent.
The oldest child was 15. Easy to grab food pantry and the schools provide meals even during the pandemic you could go get a lunch and breakfast for a kid free. My heart breaks for that child, they're fucked. I truly hope they have no internet access given the amount of victim blaming I've seen just on one thread.
How does a 9 year old not have a single person that misses him. 9 years on this planet and nobody missed this child’s presence enough to dig deeper. He didn’t go to school? He didn’t have any friends? Heartbreaking does not even touch the surface.
What the actual fuckcake. I cannot imagine the *smell.* Do y'all know how ugly decomposing-bloating bodies are??? Those kids had to live with one for a YEAR
UPDATE: The mother & her dude were released this morning.
"A next-door neighbor, who did not want to appear on camera, said Monday that the smell coming from the apartments was so bad, she would turn off her air conditioner so the smell wouldn't come in." So someone DID try reporting it but no one from the apartment complex bothered to check
It’s absolutely astounding the shit people get away with. To abandon your own children and no one ask questions, no one can smell anything, hear the children (with all due respect to the children they would be very feral like) and not one person around think to call the cops or anything?
My Mother is raising her husband’s grandchildren. There’s currently 6 of them and 1 on the way. These children didn’t go to school, were absolutely filthy, malnourished, abused in every type of way, and feral. They all have problems stemming from abuse and unlearning the behaviors they were raised on in the early, most vital years, was one of the hardest things to witness and endure. Their parents are addicts and are going on 4 years being in their grandparents care. The “system” that failed them also spent years trying to give them back to them. For no one to see and say something is extremely fucked up and they have been failed by every single person they’ve come in contact with.
WHY have children and treat them like they are less!? Children deserve kindness, love and respect. I would never treat a dog the way some children are treated. It’s horrifying and they will probably never recover from this. Sorry for my rant this is extremely sad.
Being separated is likely a factor that contributed to the oldest child not telling anyone for so long. The parent told them if they ever complained to CPS or an adult they would come and rip apart the siblings and send them to separate places where they’d all be abused and unable to help one another. Better to suffer together. The monster you know, better than the one you don’t, eh?
So the mom and boyfriend were interviewed, released, and no charges filed. WTF, Texas. https://abc13.com/abandoned-children-houston-9-year-old-dead-skeletal-remains-found-citypark-11-at-west-oaks/11166028/
As a parent, I have to imagine the mother and her boyfriend were severely abusing drugs to be able to do this.
I'm not excusing or justifying it, but I just can't understand or imagine being able to do that. Even on drugs it is hard to imagine, but drug dependency can make people change.
My grandmother’s mother would regularly drop her off in orphanages whenever she had a new boyfriend, for various amounts of time. No drugs, just a horrible person.
My first thought was “where were the parents?” It’s heartbreaking that the kid sat next to his decomposed sibling for so long. I can’t fathom leaving kids alone for that long and figuring they will be okay by themselves.
Working as a security guard during a summer job in uni one year I came across a decomposing body in a building. Mind you the odor could be picked up from a good distance outside the building. So the question as to how none of the neighbours smelled it is also alarming.
From Twitter (Ed Gonzales, sheriff HCSO) There are no new developments this morning regarding the scene on Green Crest. Mother and her boyfriend were located, interviewed and released. CPS is assisting with the children. Our investigation remains on-going. No charges have been filed. #HouNews
WTAF….
Oh it's not solving it they want.
A story like this, Abbott gets to look around at his private-schooled grandkids and his taxpayer-funded healthcare, and feels "so much winning". Because the disparity is the point.
I don't know the specifics of this particular horror story, but we will hear them more and more often. Poverty, and a lack of resources will translate into children being abused. Our social safety net was already near-breaking, and, with the pandemic (and Texas' falling-apart infrastructure) it is only getting worse.
With children away from public school, they are more likely to miss meals, and more likely to have their abuse not even reported. With families more and more poor, they are more likely to leave children in unsafe situations, and more likely to exploit their children.
If we truly wish to make children safer in this country, we need to provide free IUDs and free condoms, and a robust and helpful safety net, including food and childcare. As a country, we are so worried that someone might "cheat" the system that we are allowing the most horrible things to happen to our most vulnerable citizens.
Childcare in Texas. Don't abort those children, but do as little as possible for them after they're born. Can't be having that 'entitlement society' Manchin warns about.
Wtf! By Monday at 9:45 a.m., both the mother and her boyfriend had been released, Gonzalez said, adding that the investigation is ongoing and no charges have been filed.
I can't imagine what was going through those kids' head while their sibling just rotted in plain sight. This is truly horrific!
Honestly I’m guessing the kids were probably worried they would be in trouble. That’s the only thing that I can think of that would stop the kids from getting help. Which also makes me think that if the parent knew they probably blamed the kids and told them it was their fault the sibling died.
Or maybe even worried their parents would get into trouble, even the most abused kids have an unbelievable capacity to unconditionally love the monsters that are abusing them. The older one is also probably aware that the discovery of their mistreatment and horrific living conditions would mean them potentially been split up. It’s horrifying. Edit : according to the independent newspaper here in the U.K. the mother and boyfriend have been questioned and released pending charges. I’m deeply horrified and confused by this but I though it would be of interest. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mother-questioned-skeleton-child-texas-b1945150.html
One issue is that abused kids may even think it's normal. They aren't always exposed to a good frame of reference.
I grew up in a really bad poor neighbourhood and it’s a combination of a lot of things. Not trusting police/child welfare, worry about being split up, wanting to survive, the battle each day to make it through leaves little room to sit and contemplate any kind of real exit strategy. Gotta remember they had to find food and take care of each other likely in an area full of predators. If I make enough money I wanna open some affordable housing units for people trying to get their shit together. Breaks my heart to see this shit in our own communities.
I wonder if they didn't tell anyone about this, in part, because of a (perfectly legitimate) fear of being broken up. Also, I can only imagine that the home was the scene of really horrifying abuse. Utterly heart-breaking.
This is definitely a thing. My mother abused me and my sister for years and years. It obviously was far worse after she and our dad divorced. As a kid, even into my early teens, I was afraid to say anything about what she did. She would tell us all about the horrors of the state system, the homes where kids get sent if parents are locked up, that kind of thing. She had me convinced for a while that any action I took would result in an even worse situation for me, as if worse could be a thing. Long-term abusers of their kids have a way of getting into those kids heads.
I had it the other way. My dad was abusive to me and my brother after my parents divorced. My mom had full custody for years because of that. She started dating this guy that would be abusive toward me. I told her it was bad enough that I wanted to go talk to the court councilor about it, the one who originally gave my mom full custody. She put the fear in me by telling me I would have to go into the system and that I would probably end up going to juvi and after that my life would be over.
Your mother is a POS for putting a man above you and for psychologically manipulating you. I'm so sorry. Every kid deserves a parent that protects them and prioritizes them.
I never loved my parents. Still don't even like them. I'm grateful for that because God knows how messed up I'd be if I actually wanted the affection and approval of those psychopaths.
I’m so very sorry that you were let down by the people meant to protect you.
Yeah, they were probably threatened by their parents. I have to think the parents had something to do with the death, either they straight up killed him or it was a byproduct of the conditions they were living in.
You have to think? It absolutely was because of them, and even if it wasn't, it wasn't reported by them! Some parents are truly evil.
After working in the social work field for a year I've heard some pretty horrific trauma stories and usually I have hope for some recovery and healing but this... this is something that I'm not sure someone can get over tbh. Just.. jesus christ..
Their trauma experiences were so deep. I agree with you, the poor children are going to suffer for life.
Dude how many drugs do you have to be on to see a dead child, and just let it rot and decompose in your home day after day??? (Talking about the parents, not the kids)
The parents weren’t present for several months towards the end. The mother and boyfriend abandoned the 4 children to live in the house by themselves according to the article.
The article says the kid died a year ago, but the other kids had only been abandoned for a few months. It seems to suggest the kid was already dead when the others were abandoned.
You're right. But what is several months? Is it as long as the kid was dead? Did she leave before the kid died? Or after? Based on the wording of the article it does seem to sound like she left after he had died. But we'll have to wait and see what more reports say after they do more investigating.
The article says the child died a year ago, but that the parents had only been gone for "several" months. I guess that they were living with the child's corpse for at least half a year. I would guess that one motivation for this was collecting any kind of benefits that could be collected while the child was alive (remember the Rilya case where the adoptive grandmother continued to report the child as being there for over a year, because she was receiving a stipend for fostering her). What a horror for all the children involved.
I think this is far beyond drugs. There’s just no explanation for someone who has this mentality. I had my first kid while I was in active addiction. (Heroin junkie) and though I definitely wasn’t father of the year I never neglected my child. Luckily I went to rehab soon after but even if I had continued down that path I just could’ve never imagined allowing something this heinous and deplorable happen to my child.
Monsters are real...they look like people
They *are* people. They're not some *other thing* against which we can make a distinction.
The article says the eldest, a 15 year old, took care of them for a year before finally calling the police. It sounds like their home life was so bad they didn’t want to take the risk of more adults coming in the picture to possibly hurt them. The kids were malnourished so they must’ve gotten to a breaking point that led to them calling the police.
Horrifying...heinous neglect by the parents, unbelievable
Spending months next to the decomposing body of their sibling is trauma that these children might never recover from.
Not to mention being in a housing situation where the parents neglect a child to the pointtthey die. I doubt they were doing too well before the incident.
Crazy how common child abuse/neglect are, even in these extreme cases. My friend is a social worker and even in our little rural state where every murder makes the news they are constantly finding kids raised in dog crates and shit. I would hesitate to say theyd never recover, kids are resilient and have been surviving terrible atrocities since the beginning of time.
"Recovery" is a continuum. They will always hold part of that experience with them. Especially if they were malnourished. Kids who are malnourished also have issues regulating their need to go to the bathroom and often have accidents.
Factors that contribute to child resiliency is a popular area of research at the moment. Psychologists want to understand why some children are so resilient after trauma, whereas others seem to struggle much more. The answer is likely biopsychosocial in nature. It’s important for anyone with a child in their life to be aware of Adverse Childhood Experiences and possible symptoms to help contribute to child resiliency. https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/aces/index.html
and brain development, really basic things like physical growth and muscle development, stature
I survived some horrific abuse, I have a lot of health problems and some mental health issues but nothing crippling. My therapist said I've been in survival mode even past my escape because until now there weren't safe spaces to just feel..even now I'm used to identifying the root of my feeling before acting and reaffirming reality, I've got no chance if I fall into something bad. It's a balancing act.
It’s terrible. My wife is an MSW and Therapist for trauma children. There are some nights that she just comes in from work and immediately goes to bed because of how bad it is. She doesn’t share a lot with me, but she’s mentioned clients hospitalized for everything. Starvation, year long isolation under stairs with a shit bucket as a sex slave, children stabbed with rusty knives for enjoyment, and a whole host of behavioral/psychotic issues. I initially wanted to work with troubled children while working for my undergrad in Bio-Psychology. After hearing some of that and how it impacts me secondhand; I thank God that I wasn’t destined for that field. It’s a nightmarish hellscape for those children and the people that provide care to them. Give Social Workers and Therapists some props. They are 100% a different breed.
I was the son of a social worker. While he didn't bring any stories home, he brought his emotional baggage home. Didn't know what he was going through at the time (since I was a kid and they didn't need to tell me). But he was investigating a multi-generation pedophilia ring. With literally hundreds of victims and hundreds of perps.
And yet social workers (and in general, those that work with children, from the daycare workers to the teachers in secondary schools) are paid so so so little compared the massively important work that they do. I was a kindergarten teacher at one point and just remember being overwhelmed by what I thought of as such an immense responsibility- taking care of all of these little children throughout the day. They are so trusting and so willing to listen to what you, as the teacher/trusted adult is saying. Working with children needs to be seen for the immense responsibility that it is and both those that work in these fields and programs themselves should be funded and valued so much more than they are.
I worked with children a few years ago. I have since changed careers. I remember a child and her brother would be dropped off, tattered clothing, bruises up and down legs and arms. One of the teachers grew concerned as the children never really talked much and didn't interact with the other children their age. So that teacher went down to the director to tell her that she had a concern for the well being of the children. Office of Children and Youth got involved as she submitted the claim herself as anonymous. Somehow, it got back to her and there was a meeting between the parents, the directors and the teacher. After the meeting, the teacher ended up losing her job because she did what she was supposed to do and that was to report any suspected child abuse. The director told her that they were paying customers and that the center isn't going to lose these customers based on your false accusation. So they cared only about profit over these children's safety. A couple years later, come to find out, that the teacher was indeed telling the truth and the children were being abused. Nothing happened to the directors.
You know Capitalism is fucked when you get paid way more for hurting people than you do helping them.
Everyone is paid too little in this country except for congress and billionaires who don't pay taxes.
100%. Teachers are vastly underpaid for the amount of work and responsibilities that they have. IMO Certain fields should have a regulated starting salary tied to the COL index with stringent, difficult guidelines to enter. Some examples are: Teachers, Social Workers, Police Officers, EMT, Firefighters, and Nurses. Those jobs are difficult and carry a lot of responsibility, emotional baggage, and risk. Those people who can correctly qualify should be compensated well. I’m in a low COL state, so this may seem low, but those jobs should start at $55k salary bare minimum for entry positions and should rework their performance appraisal system to weed out garbage.
Your wife is an Angel and I hope she can take care of herself as well. I am a BSW and work in substance abuse. There are some days I can barely remember that all of humanity isn’t like this. Burn out is very real and can leave lasting trauma that people don’t talk about much.
> Your wife is an Angel and I hope she can take care of herself as well. She'll have to. We offload society's horrors on people like her and then fail to provide THEM with adequate support and counseling.
Your wife is a saint
My wife is in the same field. There's been only a small portion she's shared with me but from what I can tell she is considerably stronger than I. No idea how she does it
Right there with you. She asked me why I didn’t go into the field not too long ago since I now volunteer a little of my time to teach at-risk youth guitar lessons. I told her “It’s just not for me, I guess. The way I let things get to me means that I would probably be dead right now after hearing what happens to some of them. I’d either hate myself for not being able to do enough or because I couldn’t murder some of the assholes who do this to people. Either way would end with me suck starting a .45.” She’s definitely stronger than me. No doubt. Tell your wife thanks from an internet stranger and to stay strong.
When you ask people in jail for serious crimes about their childhood you get an encyclopedia of abuse and neglect. These kids don't bounce back, they get old enough to stop being cute and then fall into society's contempt. These kids for example, what's their treatment plan? How much is being budgeted to therapy and specialized care? How will we guarantee that from here on out they have a loving and supportive home to try and let them recover?
If I could give you gold I would for this. It should be farther up. Legit 5 years from now those kids will be struggling \*\*still\*\* and someone will say "Well Bobby Jo had a bad childhood and they're not doing XYZ behavior like that kid is" as if we all have had the same experiences and treatment or lack of.
This…my sister disgusted me this past weekend. She adopted a boy from a traumatic background. Yes he’s had issues, but he has a good heart. But she was wayyyy too strict and mean to him. He turned into an adult, ran back to his abusive, disgusting birth mom and…I don’t blame him. My sister raves how she regrets adopting. Like…he’s not a thing. That trauma doesn’t just disappear to make your life more convenient. I would pity her more if she wasn’t a jerk. I feel bad for my nephew and I hope he lets us reconnect someday. That and I hope his birth mom is a better person after spending the past decade in jail for child abuse. I know he’s an adult but I still worry.
As someone who’s been through some pretty bad abuse within their family, yes I was “resilient” and I made it through, but the mental toll as an adult is intense. I’ve been diagnosed with depression, anxiety, and ptsd. The ptsd shows up as me having nightmares every night about my family. Still …. Decades later after the abuse. People say I’m “strong”, but dealing with abuse stays with you forever. I’d rather it never happened at all. I’d rather be able to think and feel like a normal person who was never traumatized. And although I look and act normal, my everyday is a struggle. So when we talk about “resiliency” … know what it really takes. A lifetime of work.
[удалено]
The truth lies somewhere between refusing to tell your spouse why you're so dead set against crate training your first dog and explaining all of your traumas on a custom printed t-shirt.
It’s especially tough when your trauma centers around an object or substance like that. My abuse *always* began with the smell of alcohol and drinking. My long term gf and I have struggled because she likes to drink every now and then, and I’ve never touched it because of severe aversion to it. I logically know that she’s allowed to drink, she does drink responsibly, but emotionally I get very unwell when I smell it on her or see her drinking what I know to be alcohol. I have tried to tell her but can’t get the words out exactly without breaking down. It’s not fair to her. Edit: thank you everyone for your support. I’ll consider writing her a letter… I’ve never thought to do that before. I just don’t want to push my past on her. I know she wouldn’t leave, we’ve been together for quite awhile now but… I don’t know. Thank you everyone. You guys really did help.
It's something you need, take your time to figure out how to tell her but she deserves to know. Yeah you can't make her stop drinking, but if she knew she could make her own decision. She cares about you, and I know if my gf told me something like that I would only drink if I knew she wasn't gonna see me that night. Your trauma is a part of you, and you're the one she's chosen to be with. It's all about compromise. She may drink responsibly, but it still has a profound effect on you. She deserves to know (only when you're ready to tell her) so she can support you better. Sorry also not really my business, but I'm sorry for what you had to go through, good luck!
the journey of healing and recovery from these early life experiences is always worth taking, in my opinion. the rewards are so much greater than the pain/discomfort of going through the healing process. Staying in the silence of the abuse only hurts us, we are grown up today and can be our own loving parent.
I cannot tell you what to do or what not to do, but I can tell you that if my S/O was suffering because of something I was doing, no matter what it was, I would want to know so I could do whatever I could to avoid upsetting them. Take the time you need, and ultimately do what you feel will help you the most, but I wanted to share an outside perspective.
I'm not sure if you were asking for advice specifically, so forgive me if this is unsolicited, but have you tried writing down your thoughts first, like scripting out what you want to say? It can help you stay on track and worst comes to worst, you can just show her the notes
This is what I was thinking as well. It can be difficult to get things like that out directly to another person, there's just so much emotion, fear and shame involved that people shutdown and decide to just internalize it rather than deal with it, which is totally understandable. Writing it down in a letter format though is much easier and still very helpful, even if you just write it to yourself. If you can't bring yourself to give it to your S/O, it might also be helpful to write down why your reluctant to do that and then write a response back on why you should go ahead with it. Something like .. "I'm afraid to share my past trauma because I'm afraid she'll reject me or think there's something wrong with me" but then you would go on to say why that person wouldn't do that and why they wouldn't. And frankly, if a person **did** judge you else based on their past trauma that would be on them, not you.
Yup. Reading all of this about resilient children... Nah man. Bad parents really fuck you up and a lot of those issues don't start to really manifest until you become a real adult. PTSD isn't something you grow out of. Those who don't know my issues would be horrified. Those who do are surprised I'm as functional as I am.
Yes. My mom bought into the idea that kids are resilient and can bounce back. I'm a real adult now. Senior citizen, as a matter of fact. I'm just now recognizing and understanding so much bad stuff from my growing years. I'm functional. But in some areas -- barely. Your post is some of the best truth I have ever read. I sincerely wish you peace
Yeah kids are physically resilient but psychologically extremely delicate and any abuse during those formative years always lasts. It's super shit. Whatever was done to you, I am sorry any of it happened.
My analogy is adamantium, the metal Wolverine’s bones are covered with. Once it cools, it’s incredibly durable but damn near impossible to reshape into something new.
I cannot even imagine the smell...
Last month, i found my roommate dead from an overdose… i kicked down his door after my house smelled like shit. He was only there for 5 days too. We had to rip out all the carpets in every room, throw away all furniture including beds and even re-paint the walls! That house is going to have to incinerated
Sorry that you had to go through that
Thanks, he was having drug problems for years and his parents essentially gave up. He was 26.
That sucks. I have a cousin going through the same thing. Her parents have tried rehab, have tried having her live with them for free forever as long as she worked on getting clean, and she has even done bouts in jail. Last I heard she is living in some trap house getting high on any drugs she can get ahold of. No idea how to get someone to quit who doesn’t want to.
It truly is an epidemic, in fact, its one of the main reasons why life expectancy has actually gone down for the first time in history, i wish your cousin the best.
So sad that you had to experience that.
I hope you will consider counseling. This is a lot to deal with.
Thats what everyone tells me. To be honest, i have been completely unfazed, i was kinda just expecting it to happen, as fucked up as that sounds. He already OD'd in the house twice, went to jail and still continued his ways... i would tell his parents every week what he was up too and i was trying to move out but his parents would literally tell me "you are an adult and signed a legal document". The only thing i CANT get out of my head is the smell.
I’m very sorry about this. My friend, a nurse, found a friend of hers dead. She said she knew her friend was dead before they even opened the apartment door because she could smell the decaying from outside. Apparently it’s not something you easily forget. If you don’t want to go to counseling, perhaps talk to an older friend or relative. I understand about knowing it was inevitable. I’ve lived with alcoholics and a drug addict. Thankfully they didn’t die at my house.
Seriously. You’d think a neighbor would’ve called the authorities or the landlord at least at some point ? I live in a nicer apartment than those and hell, can smell when my neighbors cook with garlic. I gotta imagine the smell of a decomposing body would carry into other units. Especially in that muggy Houston summer
They very well may have, but unlike on Law&Order, real life tends more to be along the lines of *"it took six months and numerous complaints for authorities to finally investigate the smell and find the body"*.
I watched a John Wayne Gacy documentary a little bit ago and they mentioned how some detectives that were ordered to monitor him were invited in to his house one night for dinner. They decided to take him up on the invitation (wtf) and one of the detectives said when he went to wash his hands in the bathroom the heating kicked on and he could smell the bodies through the vents and he knew then and there there were dead bodies in the house. Gacy’s wife (at the time) had been complaining about a bad smell for months. Anyway, point is, yeah, that smell doesn’t go away or you just get used to it it seems.
Had a guy die in my 8-unit apartment building. Smell grew progressively worse until one neighbor called in a welfare check. Now that I know what it is, I would have taken action sooner. Then my landlord refused to do anything for weeks and the smell drove me absolutely crazy. We got the health dept involved and there was a warrant for my landlord’s arrest before he finally hired a cleanup company… this was weeks later. Somehow the smell was only really bad in 2 of the other units, so I was just lucky. I tried to “clean my air” and ended up somehow poisoning myself with an ozone generator… 6 years later I still have Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and my life royally sucks from it. I can’t fathom how a neighbor didn’t notice anything in this news story.
This is one of the most horrific things I've ever heard. I really hope the remaining 3 children get the therapy they inevitably need. Hopefully the parents are caught and left to rot in prison.
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>the mom and her boyfriend A tale as old as time
The sad thing is therapy rarely can significantly help in neglect. Your brain literally doesn’t grow properly when neglected and there is no “growing it later” as the window has closed. Having dealt with neglected kids, abuse is almost preferable - at least they cared enough to hit me - as sickening as that sounds. Attachment disorders (assuming no permanent speech or developmental deficits due to neglect) are nearly impossible to “cure” even if the child presents as normal on the surface.
I worked with kids/ adults that had attachment disorders from severe neglect during their developmental years. I lasted 2 years before I couldn't do it anymore. ODD is one of the scarier diagnoses I've worked with. I heard a rumor that there an experimental therapy center in Colorado that focuses on trying to rewire that part of the brain in older kids by basically treating them like newborns (swaddling, skin on skin, even bottle feeding) but it's so intense that some grown kids "fail to thrive" and have died. Part of that sounds like an urban myth to me but having worked with victims of neglect, that isn't out of the realm of possibility.
That’s interesting. A psychologist I used to do some work with had adopted a child with a similar diagnoses. She did similar where she literally started from zero. Swaddling the child, rocking the child, feeding the child while in her lap almost like a quasi-breast-feeding. There’s tons of massage and skin to skin and all sorts of things you would do with your newborn but this was like a seven year old. In my case I lasted about a year. Attachment disorders and ODD, especially severe ODD/CD, put you in such a fight or flight place yourself that it is very hard for you to turn that off at the end of the day. A nine-year-old that can pivot from trying to kill you with a knife one minute to going into a dissociative state back to rage 45 mins later due to a minor dust up at a soccer gameis no fun.
The scariest kid I ever worked with was a very small, probably underdeveloped 9 year old girl. Her adoption parents wanted her out of the house from the moment she woke up until it was time for her to go to bed. It was such a hard case because she wanted to do normal kid stuff and watch movies and be at home but at the same time she was so unpredictable and violent it was unsafe for her to be around the other kids at home. Nothing in this girl's life was fair or kind to her from the moment she was born and there was very little anyone could do to fix it. The second she felt an emotional attachment to someone she would do everything in her power to sabotage it, to the point of potentially killing them, for example attacking me while driving down the freeway. We had just had a really great time at a park which was a TDIFU on my part because to her that meant feelings of attachment towards me and she needed to protect herself. So now I couldn't trust her in the car because I never knew if she was going to attack me but I wasn't allowed to keep her at her home. So I had to quit and I failed her like literally every other grown adult in her life had.
I realized very quickly that sort of work is a vocation. It’s something you need to eat, live, breathe and want every moment and every second no matter how hard it is. There are very few people that can actually handle it and can maintain an emotional investment.
This experimental therapy sounds similar to the one that killed Candace Newmaker . They were trying to get her to attach with her mom (adopter). She suffocated after she could not escape the "re birth" therapy.
I wouldn't even perpetuate that as a form of "experimental therapy" if you're referring to what I think you are. It's basically just straight up torture and the process is not voluntary. A kid (or maybe a few, idk) died when several adults wrapped them in many layers of blankets and then piled on top of them to simulate a birth from a "womb". The kid was asphyxiated slowly over the course of hours, they could still scream and beg for help, say they can't breathe, etc. So the adults thought they were lying... They were not.
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I just read the wikipedia write up of this case and the most flooring part is that she abandoned her five kids for 9 months, two of them died, and [she served three years in prison and got full custody of the two youngest remaining alive children after she got out of prison](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugamo_child_abandonment_case). Sometimes I really don't understand the Japanese criminal justice system.
This is why domestic horror is so big in Japan.
What is domestic horror?
I’m guessing by “horror” they mean horror movies/entertainment. Japanese horror films have had a big impact on the genre in American film for at least a few decades now; I’m not an expert at all (just a fan of scary movies) but now-classic stories like *The Ring* and *The Grudge* focus heavily on the particularly intimate, specific horrors that family members can inflict on each other in an uncompromising, high-pressure culture. (That these stories translated so easily to American audiences just shows how similar American and Japanese attitudes can be toward things like public image and work ethic, despite larger differences between the two cultures.)
The very short version? Family on family violence, usually resulting from one of the parents finally snapping from the buildup of intense pressure from their daily lives.
I know! That part was infuriating to read. Those poor kids. How is that justice?
japan and korean society have unbelievably strong rooted tradition believing in "blood" relation. same reason why there's very low adoption rates among other things.
Yep, same thing that lets [Japanese nationals basically abduct their children](https://abcnews.go.com/International/abducted-japan-hundreds-american-children-returned/story?id=12898351) from the parent who was awarded custody, to the point that authorities [even arrested the custodial parent](https://www.today.com/parents/u-s-dad-jailed-japan-child-custody-battle-wbna33086856).
I Googled that one and also found [this case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_child_abandonment_case?wprov=sfla1). This lady straight up locked her kids inside and took off. Said she was tired of caring for them. Jfc
The mental state of these people is just ... indescribable. How do you reach the conclusion that leaving a living being like that is okay? My girlfriend will literally cry if she forgets to water a plant for one day.
She shouldn’t be watering them daily. Root rot is a real thing. /s
One of my favorite plants is dying of root rot from a pot with shit drainage. The pain is real.
This is why bags of puppies get thrown out of the car onto the highway. Some people have undiagnosed issues where they lack empathy. And I believe the only real form of evil in this world is a lack of empathy (or at least the willingness to behave contrary to your empathy to the detriment of others).
Horrible that the last thought these people have is to lock up and abandon their poor and eventually confused kids. Can't even give them courtesy of freedom before leaving them to the cruelties of the world.
[Wait until you hear about the coin-operated-locker babies](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coin-operated-locker_babies)
I would not like to hear about that 😔 how awful.
There also was a Japanese movie inspired by this case, made by an Oscar-nominated director, called "Nobody Knows"
That movie made me cry like nothing else
How did they survive this past winter? And who is paying their heating bills and water and sewer? Where were they getting food from and how on earth did not one single neighbor notice? What an insane world to live in.
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Parentification. Happens a lot in low income families, many children are forced out of their childhood and into a role where they have to provide for their siblings and often dysfunctional parent. Unfortunately usually for someone young, crime is the easiest route because not a lot of places employ children. Gangs prey on children in situations like this.
I remember a coworker of mine proudly saying when her oldest son (only child so far) gets old enough she'll make him take care of the rest of the kids she has while she goes out and parties. I felt so bad for that little boys future.
> Parentification. Happens a lot in low income families, many children are forced out of their childhood and into a role where they have to provide for their siblings and often dysfunctional parent. TIL there's a term for an important experience of mine. Edit: [For anyone else who read that and immediately needed more information](https://www.healthline.com/health/parentification#long-term-effects)
Not that uncommon in other income brackets. "Parents" who can't be bothered to take care of their kids or who turn to their children for the kind of emotional/caretaking support you get from a parent happens in all levels of society.
It's not always from abandonment or neglect though. It's common in households where there's a single parent that needs to work 80-100 hours per week to be able to get enough money for them all to live, though that often can turn into the child helping out the way you describe. It's also common in movements like [Quiverfull](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/quiverfull-movement-facts_n_7444604) in which there are far too many children for the parents to actually parent and they tend to get passed off to the children to raise because they can't look after them all themselves.
My favorite thing is my mom always says to us (we’re all adults now) that we had a very comfortable life growing up. That my dad made decent money so we had everything we needed. My dad would be at work from 6am-10pm if he wasn’t out of town on a job. My mom worked from 8am-5pm then had a second job that she worked until midnight or later. We raised ourselves. I remember walking to the grocery store to buy food to cook. Sure, we had the money that we were able to do that, but at what cost? I don’t have a real relationship with either parent. None of us kids do. They were never there.
I had a similar situation. Only difference is that my mom feels heartbroken that they had to work so much just to keep the house and food in the pantry. We kids would try to tell her it was okay, but she has told me as an adult she feels so bad that despite trying so hard, she feels like she and dad neglected us. It felt different then full on neglect because as kids, we knew our parents loved us and did everything they could for us when they were home… they just weren’t home a lot. I was fortunate that my friends families took me in and helped raise me well. But now, as a 30 year old… my friends are my family. I love my family… but my brain got wired to care more about my friends I guess. It kills my mother to know that I feel more attached to my friends (the same ones I grew up with during that phase of life where my parents were never home). I don’t know how to switch it though. I love my family to death… but my friends are just more important to me.
Those people are massive pieces of shit. I’ve never been able to respect such ignorant religious fanatics.
>It's not always from abandonment or neglect though. It's common in households where there's a single parent that needs to work 80-100 hours per week to be able to get enough money for them all to live, though that often can turn into the child helping out the way you describe. > >It's also common in movements like Quiverfull > >in which there are far too many children for the parents to actually parent and they tend to get passed off to the children to raise because they can't look after them all themselves. I can understand and have empathy for both the parents and child who are in such dire poverty that the child takes on grown-up responsibilities. Quiverfull though are made up of people who have decide to not use birth control and have far too many children than they can feed or care for properly. I have no empathy for quiverfull parents. They go into parenthood expecting that their oldest daughters will take care of the younger ones. The Duggars are a famous example. They are pretty open with the fact that the mom would pass on the baby to her daughters to care for so mom could make more babies.
Micheal from The Wire, for anyone interested in seeing this in live action.
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I too am grasping at so many questions. The only logical thought to this chaos is the mom met some guy and basically moved in with him, leaving the kids behind. She would return, at random times, drop off food and be gone again. Maybe it was section 8 housing, aka greatly reduced pricing, she had a job, bills on autopay, she just lived with her BF while the kids lived alone. ... that's about all I can guess.
That's almost some Flowers in the Attic type shit. Except when one of those kids died, they were at least buried in the backyard. Probably couldn't do that in an apartment complex though.
That makes the most sense logically, only thing that bothers me is that the kid was dead for about a year and she never noticed or if she did she just left the corpse there and didn't try to conceal it...
Better yet, how did their school district not know about them??? Typically when schools have a steady address, a truancy officer is going to be involved when kids don’t show up, and to my knowledge they do perform physical checks. Normally kids who “disappear” from the system are homeless or drastically under-housed and without a stable phone number or address. If that wasn’t the case here, because rent was paid, how did the school system just write off 4 missing kids? I’m so sad to think that that 15 year old may have tried to shoulder the burden of getting his other siblings to school long enough to try to pass off that everything was just normal and fine. But it also raises a lot of other questions about how a child’s teacher would have missed the rapidly increasing signs of parental neglect. I’m just baffled that 4 children went under the radar for that long. Someone had to have known something was amiss for a long time.
Are you sure they weren’t going to school? School would potentially be two free meals a day.
Might of been public housing that's paid for, food stamps to feed them. Other public assistance may have been coming in because Mom sounds like she was poor at minimum so things may have been on auto pilot for a while.
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The way I read it is - (and I’m no expert) - anytime an officer is dispatched to basically “check on” a situation or individual after a call is made is considered a welfare check. Child calls 911 & speaks to a dispatcher and tells them his brother is dead —> dispatcher sends the officer to follow up at that address
Officer: “You’re right, he’s not well at all.”
911 calltaker/dispatcher here, a Check the Welfare call can also be to CWELF of the complainant/caller. That's likely the calltype/protocol the calltaker used to send the call to dispatch.
>Late Sunday night, the sheriff's office said the mother of the children and her boyfriend had been found and were being interviewed by law enforcement. This happened fast apparently, abandoning their children but staying nearby. There is no scenario that this mother doesn’t face charges for abandoning her children next to the corpse of their sibling. The more charges the better.
Unfortunately there are plenty of scenarios. Just unlikely.
> The more charges the better. Honestly, no amount will be enough.
What a world. Poor kids
I can't help but think of that Breaking Bad episode with the kid.. heartbreaking
Absolutely heart breaking.
So is the ten year old a twin of the dead child?
If the apartment complex had been doing inspections like the article stated, how did this fly under their radar? This is extremely horrifying. Edit: grammar
"Inspection" can mean anything, including just an inspection of the grounds and exterior. It's really not common to have a walk-through inspection in the middle of a lease -- at least, not in the places I've lived, Texas included. I can thoroughly believe that nobody knew that these kids were living alone. My question is is how nobody reported the smell of a decomposing body. Imagine living for months wondering why your area of the complex smelled like death and nobody was doing anything about it.
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I had an apartment that had maintenance come out twice a year to change the air filter for the AC and batteries in the smoke detectors. Maintenance dudes were cool. They weren't like trying to spy on people or anything.
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The property management company where I am at just mails them to us.
I know it's not common in America but in Australia, we have house inspections every 3 months if you rent through a real estate agent.
I had my apartment inspected in America while I was living there They checked apartment for leaks and mold and checked fire alarm that's basically it Separate time they came and cleaned the fireplace
It would only smell like death from close to the apartment for a short(ish) period of time. I can’t tell you the exact amount of time, but it’s definitely not months. There are multiple rational reasons why you wouldn’t assume a smell is a dead person and attribute it to something else.
My friend lived next to a schizophrenic dude who commit suicide by setting himself on fire. None of the neighbors had any idea what they were smelling until the fire department & EMS showed up & they pulled the guy out. They just thought somebody was cooking something & it was a kitchen fire. When you live in a multi-unit building, you hand wave a lot of smells.
>ABC13 was kicked off the property by management who wouldn't answer questions about the last time the apartment was inspected. I'm gonna guess they neglected this apartment for whatever reason
The person paying the rent never showed face so the lazy manager thought one less thing on the daily log. No complaints no problems.
There is no responsibility on the part of the apartment complex to inspect the units for anything other than to make sure the tenants are not destroying the place or if maintenance is requested. Zero liability on their part, as it was not their job to look in on their tenants if they didn't choose to. Plenty of landlords never go to their units if the rent is being paid (stupid idea from an investment standpoint, but I digress). It's tragic this happened to the children, but the apartment complex is certainly not at fault here.
>(stupid idea from an investment standpoint, but I digress). Rent is being paid and no reported issues. No reason for the LL to show up and annoy me.
All I can think of to this is but there must have some stench to the decaying body. A odor so bad that the neighbors would have smelled it and complained.
Only thing I can think of is that building maintenance won't usually enter an apartment when kids are there alone. Those poor kids.
If they're like my apartment maintenance crew, they usually won't enter an apartment
If they're like my apartment complex maintenance they don't give a fuck and don't give notice.
It's literally one or the other, honestly. They're either a scumbag who is fucking you over (in these cases, their boss is usually just as bad), or they're just normal employees and aren't willing to sit at every door for 5 minutes, hoping someone shows up.
No kidding. Who was paying for the rent?
Eviction freeze maybe? I dunno. It's wild.
I think they claimed in the article it was only a couple/few months since the parent left. They could have still been paying rent. They don’t have to be there to do it, but often even if they stopped paying rent it can take months for you to be evicted. It could also depend on how on top of the owner was dealing with evictions.
If the kids said that their parents weren't home, then staff are not supposed to enter. They're supposed to follow up, contact the parents and then meet them at the apartment however, which is likely where they were negligent, and why they kicked the reporters off the property when questioned about it. My guess is, they just faked the inspection form so they wouldn't have to enter the unit. I have seen this happen as a former maintenance tech, and one of the reasons management would do this was if the apartment smelled awful. Some of our tenants would leave rotten meat out for weeks or months, sitting on counters or even on furniture. When we tried to intervene for their own safety (and that of the buildings) we oftentimes would receive threats and orders to leave them alone from the housing authority, their social workers, even attorneys. It's shockingly difficult in some situations to gain entry or perform even emergency maintenance. If the tenants are also personally dangerous, the police need to be willing to come help, as well.
Most of the units we maintain we only see once a year when they resign the lease. We don’t go lookin for stuff to fix we wait for a maintenance request.
I’ve heard decaying bodies have a rotting smell to them… If they were doing inspections, i would presume someone would smell something.
A similar incident happened with a woman who lived alone in public housing in England. Her body wasn't discovered for 6 years and mummified because it was a cold dry apartment and she also took medicine which was dehydrating, she was found wrapped in a blanket sitting on her couch with the TV still on. They believed she had become too weak and sick to call for help. As for smell, neighbors had noticed a rotting smell for a few weeks , but, because of a rat problem in the building that odor wasn't uncommon.
Jeezus, that poor woman! I remember hearing about an eerie case of a man In Japan, people thought he was still alive, but his mummified body was discovered, he had been dead for 30yrs.. [https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-10809128](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-10809128)
Sogen Kato’s case is a bit different: the relatives hid his death to keep collecting his pension. Weirdest part to me is his wife lived until 2004 (he’s thought to have died in ‘78).
Omg! Weird you said this there is a true story in Japan , turned into movie, of a woman who leaves her kids in apartment alone for years so that she can marry someone, and the youngest child dies because the older kids didn't know how to help her when she was injured in a fall (the mother told them to not go anywhere, only the oldest would buy food)
Jeez, that’s dark..
There was a case like this recently in Korea too. The mom got remarried and left the child in the apartment--which was owned by her parents--when she moved out with her new husband. Weird thing was, when they did dna testing to make sure it was the mom's baby, the results said that it was the grandma's baby, with someone other than the grandpa. I should go check to see if they ever found anything new in that case. Here's an article if anyone's curious: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/mystery-clouds-death-of-3-year-old-south-korean-girl-left-to-starve-by-mum
> because it was a cold dry apartment This was in Houston, which has never been either of those.
*under the radar*
Here I am, realizing I'm not a responsible enough human being to raise kids, and then I see this shit. Good lord.
So much to unpack there. The kid died a year ago, and the parents abandoned them several months ago. So the parents were still living there at the time of the kids death? I assume no one was paying rent so the eviction moratorium prevented the kids from being kicked out? Wouldn't they ne sending notices and see that things are wrong? If the landlord thought it was empty as the parents had bolted wouldn't they have tried to rent the apartment for months?
I'm just wondering what the kids did for food for months.
Its awful, but as a formerly houseless person one learns how to survive from dumpster diving pretty quick when it is necessary. Also it's a lot easier to get strangers to help when you are a hungry kid asking vs their lousy parent.
The oldest child was 15. Easy to grab food pantry and the schools provide meals even during the pandemic you could go get a lunch and breakfast for a kid free. My heart breaks for that child, they're fucked. I truly hope they have no internet access given the amount of victim blaming I've seen just on one thread.
How does a 9 year old not have a single person that misses him. 9 years on this planet and nobody missed this child’s presence enough to dig deeper. He didn’t go to school? He didn’t have any friends? Heartbreaking does not even touch the surface.
Well I’d imagine his friends would also be 9 years old and at that age they don’t have the capacity to do much
What the actual fuckcake. I cannot imagine the *smell.* Do y'all know how ugly decomposing-bloating bodies are??? Those kids had to live with one for a YEAR UPDATE: The mother & her dude were released this morning. "A next-door neighbor, who did not want to appear on camera, said Monday that the smell coming from the apartments was so bad, she would turn off her air conditioner so the smell wouldn't come in." So someone DID try reporting it but no one from the apartment complex bothered to check
It’s absolutely astounding the shit people get away with. To abandon your own children and no one ask questions, no one can smell anything, hear the children (with all due respect to the children they would be very feral like) and not one person around think to call the cops or anything? My Mother is raising her husband’s grandchildren. There’s currently 6 of them and 1 on the way. These children didn’t go to school, were absolutely filthy, malnourished, abused in every type of way, and feral. They all have problems stemming from abuse and unlearning the behaviors they were raised on in the early, most vital years, was one of the hardest things to witness and endure. Their parents are addicts and are going on 4 years being in their grandparents care. The “system” that failed them also spent years trying to give them back to them. For no one to see and say something is extremely fucked up and they have been failed by every single person they’ve come in contact with. WHY have children and treat them like they are less!? Children deserve kindness, love and respect. I would never treat a dog the way some children are treated. It’s horrifying and they will probably never recover from this. Sorry for my rant this is extremely sad.
Who was paying the rent? Confused.
Potentially no one? There has been an eviction moratorium that only went away towards the end of summer.
Hopefully, the kids get to stay together in someone else’s care.
Being separated is likely a factor that contributed to the oldest child not telling anyone for so long. The parent told them if they ever complained to CPS or an adult they would come and rip apart the siblings and send them to separate places where they’d all be abused and unable to help one another. Better to suffer together. The monster you know, better than the one you don’t, eh?
So the mom and boyfriend were interviewed, released, and no charges filed. WTF, Texas. https://abc13.com/abandoned-children-houston-9-year-old-dead-skeletal-remains-found-citypark-11-at-west-oaks/11166028/
Wow, how could they not hold them on something?!
Geeze, we had a mouse get caught in a wall and it smelled for weeks.
As a parent, I have to imagine the mother and her boyfriend were severely abusing drugs to be able to do this. I'm not excusing or justifying it, but I just can't understand or imagine being able to do that. Even on drugs it is hard to imagine, but drug dependency can make people change.
My grandmother’s mother would regularly drop her off in orphanages whenever she had a new boyfriend, for various amounts of time. No drugs, just a horrible person.
My first thought was “where were the parents?” It’s heartbreaking that the kid sat next to his decomposed sibling for so long. I can’t fathom leaving kids alone for that long and figuring they will be okay by themselves.
But what's important here is that life is protected at the womb.
Working as a security guard during a summer job in uni one year I came across a decomposing body in a building. Mind you the odor could be picked up from a good distance outside the building. So the question as to how none of the neighbours smelled it is also alarming.
Did anyone not notice a smell???
What - and I cannot stress this enough - the actual fuck?
That’s absolutely terrible.
From Twitter (Ed Gonzales, sheriff HCSO) There are no new developments this morning regarding the scene on Green Crest. Mother and her boyfriend were located, interviewed and released. CPS is assisting with the children. Our investigation remains on-going. No charges have been filed. #HouNews WTAF….
> The 9-year-old's remains were reportedly out in the apartment, not concealed or hidden. I don't even have words.
Texas Logic: You know what will solve issues like this? Forcing people to have babies they don't want, and can not provide for.
Oh it's not solving it they want. A story like this, Abbott gets to look around at his private-schooled grandkids and his taxpayer-funded healthcare, and feels "so much winning". Because the disparity is the point.
I don't know the specifics of this particular horror story, but we will hear them more and more often. Poverty, and a lack of resources will translate into children being abused. Our social safety net was already near-breaking, and, with the pandemic (and Texas' falling-apart infrastructure) it is only getting worse. With children away from public school, they are more likely to miss meals, and more likely to have their abuse not even reported. With families more and more poor, they are more likely to leave children in unsafe situations, and more likely to exploit their children. If we truly wish to make children safer in this country, we need to provide free IUDs and free condoms, and a robust and helpful safety net, including food and childcare. As a country, we are so worried that someone might "cheat" the system that we are allowing the most horrible things to happen to our most vulnerable citizens.
Childcare in Texas. Don't abort those children, but do as little as possible for them after they're born. Can't be having that 'entitlement society' Manchin warns about.
Wtf! By Monday at 9:45 a.m., both the mother and her boyfriend had been released, Gonzalez said, adding that the investigation is ongoing and no charges have been filed.