Posted on 01/08/2003 2:22:53 PM PST by victim soul
My primary concern is for the unwanted children who are brought into this world, then neglected, abused, tortured and killed -- just like those three precious boys in Newark, NJ in the news at the moment.
My scondary concern is the cost. Yes, people have a "right" to conceive and have children -- but, they do not have the right to expect me to pay taxes to subsidize raising their children. And, there is the societal cost to consider, our prisons are full of unwanted, unloved children who have grown up on the wrong side of the tracks.
People should not have children unless they are fully prepared and properly equipped to nuture them to productive adulthood.
I have NO PROBLEM with the forced sterilization of people who have demonstrated their total incapacity to behave as responsible parents.
You're a fool if you deciphered that out of my earlier posts. I'm just as hard on deadbeat fathers. However, I wouldn't jail them like they do now because it fosters the situation you described. I would establish some type of work program, chain gang or something that would make damn sure these looser men, (women too that are required to pay child support), paid for the needs of their children.
Open your eyes and see the damage the welfare state has done to this Country.
Do you believe these two women (Murphy/Williams) have the capacity to nuture children?
As far as I know, they both can still have more.
NEWARK, N.J. (Jan. 9) - The woman who was supposed to be taking care of the three brothers in a torture and abuse case, including a 7-year-old boy whose body was found stuffed in a plastic storage bin, was captured early Thursday in a Newark apartment.
Sherry Murphy was found sleeping at around 2 a.m., police Lt. Derek Glenn said. She had been sought since the body of Faheem Williams was found Sunday, a day after his two brothers were found starving in a locked room.
Murphy, who was wanted on child endangerment charges, had been caring for the boys since their mother, Melinda Williams, was jailed on assault charges in March.
The FBI has also been preparing a warrant charging Murphy, a go-go dancer who is Williams' cousin, with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
Newark police had been flooded with tips that Murphy left New Jersey.
Faheem Wilson's twin brother, Raheem, 7, and another brother, Tyrone Hill, 4, remained hospitalized Wednesday in fair condition. When they were found, they were cowering under a bed soaked with urine, feces and vomit in the basement of a Newark rowhouse. They were using a jar for a toilet and their hair was infested with lice. They had not eaten in days.
Authorities did not know Faheem existed until Raheem said at the hospital that he hadn't seen his twin for a long time. They went back the next day and discovered Faheem's mummified remains in the purple storage box. He had been dead for more than a month.
No one has been charged in the death, but authorities have been looking for Murphy, 41, who took the children after Williams was jailed for child abuse.
Williams, 31, was hit by a car while rushing to see her children Saturday and is in critical condition at a New York hospital. Before Faheem's death, she told authorities she could not find Murphy or the children after she got out of jail months ago.
New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services had received 10 complaints about the family over the past 10 years, including one in October 2001 that Williams was beating and burning her children.
Three of the complaints were substantiated: Williams left the children alone in 1996 and 1999, and she failed to get medical attention for another child, 7-year-old Fuquan, after he cut his hand in 1998. The boy, now 11, is in a treatment center in New York.
Authorities say at least one of the boys also was molested. A friend of Williams was arrested Wednesday and charged with sexual abuse.
Yet the state agency closed the case in February 2002, saying it could not find the boys. That same month, Williams was jailed for child endangerment stemming from a 1996 incident and she entrusted the boys to Murphy, who was dancing in bars under the stage name ``Ebony.''
Police said Murphy has a crack habit but no criminal record.
When Raheem and Tyrone were rushed to the emergency room, they were weak and undernourished. Tyrone, who showed evidence of scars and burn marks, was put on a liquid diet because he could not handle solid food.
A cat in the apartment was immaculately clean and well-fed.
``The mere fact that he had food means he was better off than those kids,'' police Lt. Derek Glenn said.
Much of the mistreatment of the boys happened while they were supposedly under the protection of the state child welfare agency. Investigators say they were subjected to nearly continuous abuse that included beatings and burnings with cigarettes and hot liquids.
``This is the most horrible story I have ever heard,'' said Mayor Sharpe James. ``There's enough blame here to go around for a lot of people.''
The ghastly case is just the latest around the country to highlight the difficulties caseworkers have in protecting some of the nation's most vulnerable children from abuse or even death.
In Florida, the state's child-welfare agency went through a shake-up last year after caseworkers lost track of 5-year-old Rilya Wilson for 15 months before realizing she was missing. In Missouri, a caseworker resigned last week after a 2-year-old boy who had been sent back to a foster home was shaken to death.
In New Jersey, Gov. James E. McGreevey ordered an investigation of the agency and new procedures for investigating allegations of abuse. The supervisor in charge of the Williams case was suspended with pay Wednesday.
``It appears that's where mistakes were made in this case,'' said Micah Rasmussen, a spokesman for the governor. Neither the supervisor nor the caseworker has been identified.
New Jersey's Division of Youth and Family Services has 1,400 people to supervise some 47,000 children; the average caseload is 35. National advocates recommend that a caseworker handle no more than 25.
Union officials say the caseworker assigned to the Williamses was juggling 107 cases, but state officials claim the number was far less. They say the unidentified worker was responsible for 53 children in 27 families.
01/09/03 04:10 EST
Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
This is an extreme case as you know and doesn't justify wholesale destruction civil rights for everyone pre-emptively. In any event, the fathers of these children, (who I notice are never mentioned - where are they?) are also free to have more children and abandon them to their fate. Some people with drug problems do awful things, sometimes awful things to children. And not just women. If a drug addicted person does harm someone else, particularly a child, we should put them in jail for a long, long time.
This case came to national attention only because a child died.
Hundreds of thousands of children in the U.S. face unbelievably harsh conditions daily at the hands of people like Williams/Murphy.
We have neither the political will to take the children away from them nor to sterilize them -- what should we do to protect the innocent children ??
The deadbeat dads are equally responsible -- beyond a vasectomy, I would be pleased to castrate them as well.
Let's see, so after we give government the power to arbitrarily decree who may be sterilized and who may not, the Hillary Clinton administration decrees that "Republicanism is a form of child abuse" and decides that, henceforth, all Republicans must be sterilized. How would you like that?
Our constitution established limited government for a reason. It's because putting too much power in government's hands inevitably leads to abuse.
But, please make no mistake: the long term plan of the so-called "pro-choicers" is exactly what I've outlined here. "Pro-choice" is a dodge, a lie. The real agenda is government control over the family in every sphere, not excluding the decision over when to reproduce. We are very definitely heading for a situation in this country in which the decision to abort is "intensely personal" and must be "left to a woman and her doctor," but the decision to carry a pregnancy to term will require a government permit. This is why so-called "pro-choice" organizations like Planned Barrenhood seem strangely silent when China's "family planning programs" (i.e., "the government will kill your second child if you won't kill your first") are mentioned. It's because they see that as progress.
Yeah, you're ahead of the curve, all right. But when you or your children are declared "unworthy to reproduce" by virtue of your politics, religion, race, or some other arbitrary criterion, don't say I didn't warn you.
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