This is disgusting ...

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

BadgeBunny

Sharpshooter
Special Hen
Joined
Feb 5, 2007
Messages
38,213
Reaction score
16
Location
Port Charles
Guess since Old Fart doesn't post articles anymore :( I'll do my best to step up ... though I'll never be as good as he was ... :werd:

Anyway ... this woman (and people like her, which, incidentally tend to be women) is one of those people who there is not a punishment harsh enough for ... What she put that baby, through before he finally passed, is abhorrent ... :madbox: And is yet another reason I think social media is not all it's cracked up to be ... Like I needed one more ... :chop:

http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/experts-social-media-can-feed-munchausen-by-proxy



WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — Experts say the case of a mother accused of poisoning her 5-year-old son to death with salt appears be an example of how social media feeds into Munchausen by proxy, a disorder in which caretakers purposely harm children and then bask in the attention and sympathy.

Lacey Spears, of Scottsville, Kentucky, has pleaded not guilty to charges of depraved murder and manslaughter in the January death of her son, Garnett-Paul Spears, whose sodium levels rose to an extremely dangerous level with no medical explanation.

As Spears moved around the country — Alabama, Florida and eventually New York — she kept friends updated on her son's frequent hospitalizations with photos and musings on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and a blog.

"My sweet angel is in the hospital for the 23rd time," she tweeted in 2009. A series of reports on the case by The Journal News, which covers the New York suburbs, found she kept it up right through her son's death, with 28 posts in the last 11 days of Garnett's life, including, "Garnett the great journeyed onward today at 10:20 a.m."

Dr. Marc Feldman, a psychiatrist and forensic consultant in Birmingham, Alabama, who wrote the book "Playing Sick," said he believes the Internet has contributed to the number of Munchausen by proxy cases, estimated from one study to be more than 600 a year in the U.S.

In a case exposed in 2011 in Great Britain, a childless 21-year-old woman joined an Internet forum for parents, claiming to have five children and chronicling her nonexistent baby's battle with celiac disease and bacterial meningitis. Doctors at Seattle Children's Hospital found three cases of mothers who falsely blogged that their children were near death and were rewarded with support.

"There are instantly accessible and endlessly supportive groups out there that will pray with you and cry with you if you purport your child to be ill," Feldman said.

Mark Sirkin, director of the mental health counseling program at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, said that with social media, "you can expand your circle from the people you know to strangers who you've never met — you're just getting that much more attention."

While prosecutors and defense attorneys in the Spears case have yet to mention Munchausen in court papers or hearings, experts say the disorder could play a role because Spears fits the pattern of caregivers who invent, exaggerate or cause a health problem in someone in their care and then seek to portray themselves as a hero.

Spears, who was living in suburban New York when her son died, is accused of administering sodium through a feeding tube he had in his stomach while he was hospitalized at Westchester Medical Center. Prosecutors say she did it in the bathroom, where there were no surveillance cameras.

"This mother was intentionally feeding her child salt at toxic levels," Westchester County prosecutor Doreen Lloyd said at Spears' arraignment. She also alleged that Spears had done Internet research on the effects of sodium and that Spears had tried to dispose of a bag tainted with sodium by asking a friend to "get rid of it and don't tell anybody."

According to court documents, Spears told police she used only "a pinch of salt" for flavor when feeding her son fruits and vegetables through his tube.

Spears said the feeding tube was necessary because Garnett couldn't keep food down. Some friends told The Journal News they saw no sign of that. They were also confused by her claims that Garnett's father was killed in a car accident. A man who says he's the father lives in Alabama.

Her attorney Stephen Riebling said last week that the defense would focus "on the relevant facts, not fiction."

Spears' lawyers won't comment on whether a psychiatric defense is planned.

But by using a "depraved murder" charge, the district attorney seems to be taking a disorder like Munchausen into consideration.

The charge alleges "extreme recklessness" and "depraved indifference to human life" rather than an intentional killing, so prosecutors don't have to prove that Spears meant to kill her son.

Feldman said it's difficult for jurors to believe a mother would purposely hurt her child just to get attention.

"These mothers tend to be psychopathic," he said. "They don't experience guilt and they lack empathy."

Louisa Lasher, an Atlanta-area consultant in child abuse cases, said parents who have the syndrome "do not love children in the way that most people do."

Munchausen by proxy has been suspected in several court cases over the years. In 1979, a California woman was convicted of murder for slowly poisoning one child; the case was cracked when a second baby came down with similar symptoms. In 2010, a Tennessee woman pleaded guilty but mentally ill to charges she injected saltwater into her infant son's feeding tube. A woman in Minnesota is accused of smothering her son; she said she wanted more attention from doctors.

Most cases rarely end in death because the child "is the goose that lays the golden egg for somebody who's so needy of attention," Sirkin said. "It would defeat the purpose to kill the child." Often when a death occurs, it's because of a miscalculation, Feldman said.

As for treatment, Sirkin said long-term psychotherapy is required.

"It's not like a snake phobia where you can take somebody through some behavioral training and they'll be over it," he said. "This is a personality type that takes years in the making, and I think it probably involves psychotherapeutic treatment that would also take years."
 

BadgeBunny

Sharpshooter
Special Hen
Joined
Feb 5, 2007
Messages
38,213
Reaction score
16
Location
Port Charles
The POS father should be charged with negligence for not keeping up with his son. She should be put down like the sick animal she is.

Do you think that charging him with negligence would make more absentee fathers be more attentive? (I'm not looking for a fight, I'm honestly curious about this because when I worked for a general practice attorney divorces were, by far, the most "tense" cases we had. And so many times it was the woman who made it that way. Women with kids were the WORST ... )

I just wonder if it was one of those things where she was such a ***** that the father thought the kid would be better off if he wasn't coming around ... I've seen that more than once, although I gotta say that even then, the poor kids suffered because mom was NEVER happy no matter what the dad did ...
 

Mike_60

Sharpshooter
Special Hen
Joined
Jan 15, 2011
Messages
778
Reaction score
0
Location
Blanchard
Unfortunately, it has become all to frequent that fathers are only there for the insemination and then bail. I feel society, and not just the legal system, should hold these turds accountable for their actions. I understand your point about intolerable spouses as I've seen some, but something needs to change. I know it is only a fools wish, but why can't people just try to act like decent human beings for a change, life for everyone would be so much better.
 

BadgeBunny

Sharpshooter
Special Hen
Joined
Feb 5, 2007
Messages
38,213
Reaction score
16
Location
Port Charles
Unfortunately, it has become all to frequent that fathers are only there for the insemination and then bail. I feel society, and not just the legal system, should hold these turds accountable for their actions. I understand your point about intolerable spouses as I've seen some, but something needs to change. I know it is only a fools wish, but why can't people just try to act like decent human beings for a change, life for everyone would be so much better.

I hear ya ... and God knows I don't have any answers. I know there are deadbeat dads, because I was married to one, unfortunately. Left when I was pregnant with Son No. 3, never came to visit, never called, never paid a dime of child support. I know I'm not the easiest person in the world to get along with when I'm mad but I NEVER tried to keep him from his kids. And I never said anything unkind about their father in front of them. When they were older and wanted to know why he left, I told them it was because of ME ... not them ... still ... kids have a way of figuring things out ... and I had relatives who were more than glad to tell them things I didn't think they were old enough to hear ... or understand ... :grumble:

I know families that have stayed together until the bitter end but still there was abuse by one parent that was covered up by the other because God forbid folks find out they weren't the "perfect" family. It was all about appearances ... damage to the kids be damned ... that was not even a consideration.

I guess it's been this way since the beginning of time ... And I can't even say some people behave like animals ... Even animals don't treat their young like some humans do ... :(

Can't put them ALL in jail ... but you are right ... there needs to be SOME kind of accountability ...
 

Latest posts

Top Bottom