32-pound, 10-year-old found locked in Mo. closet
source
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH | Associated Press – 14 hrs ago
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A Kansas City woman was charged Saturday with abusing her 10-year-old daughter who weighed just 32 pounds when she was found locked in a closet that reeked of urine.
The 29-year-old woman faces charges of assault and child abuse and endangerment in Jackson County Circuit Court. The Associated Press is not naming the mother to protect the child's identity. Prosecutors are requesting that bond be set at $200,000.
Officers freed the girl after responding Friday morning to a call to a child abuse hotline. Neighbors told police that they didn't know the malnourished child taken from the public housing complex even lived there.
When officers first arrived, two women told the officers that the mother had left about 20 minutes earlier with two girls, whom they described as "clean and well fed," a Kansas City officer said in the probable cause statement.
A social services worker said there should be three children at the home. But the women insisted, "No, we have lived here for several years, and she only has two daughters that stay here, and we have never seen the other girl, but we heard she stays with the father or an aunt," the probable cause statement said.
Officers ultimately made their way into the apartment, where they found a portable crib pushed up against a bedroom closet, which was tied closed. The officers asked if anyone was inside, and a child's voice answered "yes," the probable cause statement said.
The girl told officers that her mother took her sisters out to breakfast, but she didn't go because "she messes herself."
The girl was transported to a Children's Mercy Hospital, where she was diagnosed with multiple skin injuries. Hospital staff said she had gained just 6 pounds since she last was at the hospital six years earlier.
The girl told detectives who interviewed her at the hospital that her mother puts her in the closet "a lot," that she doesn't get to eat every day and that she "does not want to go back home anymore." The girl also said she gets in trouble "because she keeps peeing on herself" and her mother will "punch her on her back real hard," according to the probable cause statement.
The mother was arrested later Friday and the two younger children were placed in protective custody. The mother told police she doesn't let the 10-year-old leave the house because she knows the girl is malnourished and would "get in trouble if someone saw her."
The mother's boyfriend, who is not the girl's father and hasn't been charged, said he hadn't seen the girl in about a year. He said that when he asked about her, the mother told him she was with her aunt or in her room because she was in trouble. He said he never knew the mother put the girl in the closet or "he would have done something about it," the probable cause statement said.
Mike Mansur, a spokesman for the Jackson County prosecutor's office, said the mother hasn't said why she singled the girl out.
Yet Another Unfit Mother
Re: Yet Another Unfit Mother
Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
yrs,
rubato
Re: Yet Another Unfit Mother
Dales, I hope you are not giving the father a Pass. Presumably, he does exist.
There is not a lot of information here, but it is remarkable that there was not a single family member or friend who could have intervened to protect that child. How sad that the final backstop is the police and some county social work agency.
Some people seem to give less thought to reproductive decisions than they do on what clothes to wear. Clearly this woman had no business bringing any children into the world, yet one might infer that the Gub'mint paid her to do just that.
I guess I'm a conscientious objector in the (government's) War on Poverty.
There is not a lot of information here, but it is remarkable that there was not a single family member or friend who could have intervened to protect that child. How sad that the final backstop is the police and some county social work agency.
Some people seem to give less thought to reproductive decisions than they do on what clothes to wear. Clearly this woman had no business bringing any children into the world, yet one might infer that the Gub'mint paid her to do just that.
I guess I'm a conscientious objector in the (government's) War on Poverty.
Re: Yet Another Unfit Mother
Experts say 32-pound Mo. girl faces long recovery
MARIA SUDEKUM, Associated Press
Updated 01:25 p.m., Monday, June 25, 2012
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A severely malnourished 10-year-old Kansas City girl who was found locked in a closet remained hospitalized Monday and likely faces an extended recovery after an initial "failure to thrive" diagnosis, experts said.
"The next few months of her life are going to be pretty critical to her recovery," said Ann Thomas, vice president of program administration for The Children's Place, a Kansas City nonprofit that treats young children who have experienced trauma.
Police found the 32-pound girl Friday after responding to a call from a child abuse hotline. She was taken to Children's Mercy Hospital on Friday and remained there Monday, said Mike Mansur, spokesman for the Jackson County prosecutor's office. He said the child's condition hasn't been released.
The child's 29-year-old mother appeared in Jackson County court Monday. She was shackled at the wrists and quietly listened as a judge read the felony charges against her — assault, child abuse and endangerment. The judge also entered a not guilty plea for the woman, who was ordered held on $200,000 cash bond. She requested a public defender for her next court appearance, scheduled for July 12.
The Associated Press is not naming the mother to protect the child's identity.
A probable cause statement police filed Saturday when the mother was charged said she told police she didn't let the girl leave the house because the child is malnourished and she would "get in trouble if someone saw her."
The child weighed 26 pounds in January 2006, the police statement said.
Dr. Doug Carlson, professor of pediatrics at Washington University in St. Louis and director of hospital medicine at St. Louis Children's Hospital, said doctors are likely checking the child for various ailments, such as intestinal problems, that could have contributed to the "failure to thrive" diagnosis, which was in the probable cause statement.
He said, however, that a five-pound gain for a child was much too little, and a parent should have sought medical attention.
"There's no question that based on this child's size that a reasonable parent would have sought medical care," Carlson said.
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Your collective inability to acknowledge this obvious truth makes you all look like fools.
yrs,
rubato
Re: Yet Another Unfit Mother
My inference was that the mother was intentionally starving the child for some reason. She might have actually had an incontinence problem that made it problematic to take her out in public, and caused the mother a lot of grief.
I know this is a silly issue in the big picture, but it would be interesting to follow her progress as she grows older (assuming she is placed in a "normal" household). I wonder if HGH injections could help her to regain some of the lost physical development of the past years.
I know this is a silly issue in the big picture, but it would be interesting to follow her progress as she grows older (assuming she is placed in a "normal" household). I wonder if HGH injections could help her to regain some of the lost physical development of the past years.