Miscellaneous

Lessons in Babysitting

Strapped for cash? Gas prices giving you blues? Can't afford a babysitter?

Try a cage!

A Florida mother has been jailed for 20 years for keeping her teenage adopted son in a cage. The 17-year-old weighed 22kg (3st 7lb) when child welfare workers found him in 2005. He suffered from severe medical and emotional problems and his mother, Brenda Sullivan, told a judge at the time that authorities told her to keep the boy in a crib.

But in January she pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated child abuse. Prosecutors agreed to drop lesser child neglect charges. "There's only one conclusion when you look at the medical evidence in this case, and that is that she literally starved him," said prosecutor Julie Schlax. Sullivan's husband was also arrested but died in January 2007 while awaiting trial.

Two other children, 13-year-old twins the couple adopted as infants, testified that they were also kept in similar cages.

Probably should've gotten the poor kid a hamster wheel.

Full post as published by Quiz Law on May 23, 2008 (boomark / email).