Scribblings

I don't get some people

There was a particularly horrifying news story on TV last night and this morning. It seems this couple in Collingswood, NJ had four adopted sons and they starved these kids. It gave me the creeps when the reporter talked about the conditions these kids were in. The oldest, a 19 year old, is only 4 feet tall and weighs like 54 pounds. That is just too sickening.

No one might have known about these kids if the 19 year old hadn't been caught rooting around in a garbage dumpster, looking for food. Neighbors called police and the police found the other boys inside the home. The really shocking piece of news is that the Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) should have intervened. For crying out loud, apparently people from DYFS were visiting every month! How could they not know?

Of course, now that the story is all over the newspapers, TV and Internet DYFS is doing something now when it's almost too late. What if one of those kids died?
They've suspended five people, including managers and supervisors along with the caseworker. I was just thinking that these people ought to have a cell next to the so-called parents.

Here is the kick in the head about the DYFS caseworker ... she was monitoring another kid in the house the parents were trying to adopt. This kid is a girl and she seemed to be of a normal weight and height so apparently she wasn't included in the abuse. Anyway, this caseworker was evaluating how "safe" the household was and never 'noticed' the condition of the boys. Did the worker look the other way? Or just didn't care?

In addition to the four starving boys, these parents from hell also had two adopted little girls. They seemed to be in a normal range for their ages. So why did the parents only starve the boys?

Even more than that question, I'd like to know the answer to why did these people adopt so many kids if they were just going to turn around and starve them? Maybe the answer is that they would get this stipend from the state. I suppose that money was supposed to be used to support the kids ... but what if it wasn't?

I don't get how these people were able to continue adopting kids? I don't get some people ... and in this case, that would include the DYFS employees as well as those parents from hell.