Child endangerment.

[milefile]

Recently in New York City, on a Saturday night, a single mom had to go to work. Childcare had been arranged for her two kids, nine and one. The sitter never showed up, though, and the woman would ran a real risk of loosing her job if she missed her shift. She decided to leave her children sleeping and go to work. When she came home the next morning the apartment building had burned down and her children were dead. The New York district attorney has charged her with reckless endangerment, and she may spend something like ten years in prison, if indicted and convicted.

Is this justice? Does it make an ounce of sense that kids are left unsupervised every day in riskier situations, for no good reason, and because a freak accident doesn't occur it is perfectly legal, and yet, when an individual makes a calculated decision, under duress, with her kids best interests and security in mind, which results in an unforseeable tragedy, she becomes a criminal? Isn't that arbitrary? Does it make an ounce of sense that New York has no legal precident for such cases, and no law which defines at what age it is legally permissible to leave children unsupervised, and it is still prosecuting this woman? Does it make an ounce of sense that the person who has lost the most and who's life is essentially already ruined, is the one who has become the criminal defendant?

 

[Ghost C]

I was first left alone for hours at a time when I was 5 or 6, and did perfectly fine, but then again I was "smarter" (Had alot more common sense) than most of the kids around that age these days.

I say it's relatively stupid to prosecute her, considering that if she cared about her kids at all, she's already had enough punishment.

 

[DGB454]

Milefile...Would you leave your 1 year old home without a babysitter? My child is more important than any job. If she couldn't understand that then yes she deserves to be prosecuted.

 

[Gil]

Dave,
I hear your heart, but put on this lady's shoes for a second. Remembering that you have a wife to help you with the kiddos, and she is doing it alone.

Okay, we're talking about a one-income family here. Income is probably not high. A "working poor" mom. (Not a stereotype--the implication is that either due to divorce, or deadbeat dad(s), this woman and many like her are struggling to get by)
No matter what the government would have you believe, getting a job is not always easy. She believe that she had to go to work, or risk losing the only form of income she had to house, feed, and clothe her babies. She was probably working the nite shift because it allowed her to get to her kid's activities, and because the night shift tends to pay more.
That said, I believe the onus for this tragedy should be on the system. If more jobs were able to provide on site child care, round the clock gratis, or at a substantially reduced rate, as a perk of employment, these tragedies could be averted.

While I agree, that the kids should not have been left alone...was this a tenement situation? Did the smoke alarms work reliably?
Can it be determined beyond a shadow of doubt that if an adult had been there, probably sleeping as well, that there would have been a different outcome? Or, would the babysitter be dead too?

My knee-jerk reaction was the same as yours. But after I thought deeply about it for a second, my heart goes out to this woman. It isn't like she went clubbing with her girlfriends. She went to her JOB. I can see villifying her if she was out partying, but not for getting by the best way she could.

 

[ShobThaBob]

I could not have said it better than Gil. On the other hand, we really have no idea what kind of a parent she actually was. My girlfriend was left at home by her mom when she was 7 to supervise her younger siblings while her mother went to work. If she didnt clean up after them or something, she would get slapped around. Although, judging by what we do know about the mother...she did the right thing...what else was she supposed to do?

 

[TurboSmoke]

Originally posted by milefile
The sitter never showed up

if she was a decent mother she would have put her children's safety before her job, or at the very least phone up and make sure the sitter had arrived...

such is life...people starve and die everyday in africa....

death and injustice is a fact of life....some have power to stop it and other dont...

 

[Gil]

Originally posted by TurboSmoke
if she was a decent mother she would have put her children's safety before her job, or at the very least phone up and make sure the sitter had arrived...

I never said that I approved of what she did. She did what she thought she had to. However, if she had stayed home, she probably would have gone to bed and slept while the kiddos slept.
Now when the fire started, who's to say she would have woken up? She might have died too. I suppose that would have made her a better mother? At least it would have been a better "news night" for the networks.

One more time for the folks that don't know what it is to be poor, honest, and struggling.
When the rent is due, the cupboards are bare, and you are near broke, you don't blow off work unless you know your boss is understanding enough to not fire your butt.
You still end up missing a day's pay, and maybe you don't eat, or pay your rent. This lady was probably between a "rock and a hard place."

So, what I'm hearing from you is that it's better to face homelessness, and starvation than to do what you can to live up to your fiscal responsibilities.

People complain when welfare moms stay at home and take care of their kids. People complain when welfare moms try to work, and have to deal with un-reliable child care. One is seen as a lazy sponge, living off of the system. The industrious one, trying to pull herself and her kids out of poverty and off of the welfare system, is seen as "abusive" and "uncaring" and "reckless"...

From someone whose been there, If you have one ounce of pride left in your body, go into the store and pay for your groceries with food stamps, or WIC vouchers. If you do it because that's the only way you can keep your family fed, it's still hard to endure the pitying looks of the other people in the line, and the cashier.

Hang up your Merrels, Cons, and Nikes and walk in her Payless brand shoes for a while, then come back and tell me how horrible a mother she is!!!

Damn! another "Gil rant"

 

[milefile]

I'm surprised at some of the responses so far. I talked about this with my wife last night, and she started off sharing DGB's opinion. So I asked her if the mother should be punished if there had been no fire and the children were fine. She said "yes". Then I asked her if the mother should be punished for loosing her job, ending up on welfare, possibly being evicted, and her children going hungry. At this point we both realized she was assuming things about the situation based on our situation. We'll never have trouble finding someone to watch our son if need be; he has two grandmothers who'll fight over it. More importantly, either one of us could easily call in to work and miss a day with no consequences. This isn't the case for many, though. I have had jobs where missing a day could easily have resulted in termination. Put in the same situation, I probably would've done the same thing. I don't think those of you who say, unconditionally, no job is worth more than a child, realize all the implications of what you are saying; I don't think you are considering it from the context of another's life. I imagine this mother, in making her decision, could've thought to herself: "What's the worth that could happen? The building burn down?"

Every day parents leave their kids unsupervised all over the place, and not only single moms or low income parents. In fact, my understanding is that affluent parents are much more likely to leave their kids unsupervised on a regular basis. The various interpretations of that fact aren't important to this mother's case, however, because cherry-parquet floors burn as well as plywood.

So what is the mother being punished for? Making sure her kids will have food and clothes and a roof over their heads? Or is she being punished because the building burned? If she'd stayed home is there any way to determine she wouldn't have died, too, or the sitter?

What law is the mother being charged with? There is no law that says you cannot leave a nine year old in charge of a one year old, no legal precedent at all. And that makes sense. Not all children are the same. One nine year old may have what it takes to be left unsupervised, another may not. What might be just for some may not be just for others.

When you were nine years old did you not go outside and play for hours, out of sight of your parents? I did. In fact there was a creek near where I grew up and that was where we went all the time. One of su could've drown. If it had happened, would my parents be charged with criminal negligence because they weren't around? How is this different?

There is only one way I can understand why someone would make the unequivocal claim, "no job is more important than a child" (because it is unequivocal; more reasonable would be to say no job is more important unless...): if they believe that people are, or should be, entitled to protection from the inevitable hardships of life. For instance, if one believes this mother should be able to skip work, get fired and then recieve money from the government, then the luxury of black and white moral judgements are tenable. But, in reality, which is to say, in the absence of the tenability or benefit of such luxury, decisions must be weighed and balanced against many factors.

Of course everybody, including myself, wants to jump on the chance to agree with the apparently superior value judgement, "no job is worth more than a child". And I think it is too easy for us to project our own comfort and security onto a situation that didn't have either.

 

[TurboSmoke]

Her kids are more important than her job...i mean she can always find another dish-washing gig but dead children are not quite so easy to replace....

as for staying home with them and possibly perishing in the fire with her kids....well i bet she is wishing that she had done that rather rotting in a jailcell somewhere while her children are in heaven...

its just my opinion....even poverty and empty cupboards are preferable to the tragic fire...there is no job in this planet that would keep me (nor any decent human) from protecting my kids..

 

[milefile]

she can always find another dish-washing gig

How can you say that? How do you know?

There's still nothing in the explanation of your opinion that makes me look at it more closely or from a different perspective; to put it another way, there is no explanation. You've ignored pretty much everything I said in both of my posts. Perhaps if you could provide more information to support your opinion, rather than merely invoking the abstraction "decency" (thinly vieled insult perceived, by the way), I could take your opinion seriously.

The event gives rise to many questions and most of the posts in this still short thread exhibit a knee-jerk, witch-hunt mentality that ignores facts.

 

[Red Eye Racer]

Anyone take into consideration whether or not the kids started the fire?

 

[milefile]

They didn't. My understanding is that it was arson.

 

[Red Eye Racer]

Originally posted by milefile
They didn't. My understanding is that it was arson.

I guess that doesnt rule them out completely then.

It's hypocritical for me to say to much about this, not having kids and all.

I guess I dont agree with leaving them alone for a 9 hour shift.... and wouldnt be suprised at all to hear that the fire started in her apartment.

 

[Ellegance]

This is a tough call. I don't think that she should be prosecuted. If anything, she needs some help from the state.

She's working the night shift and trying to provide for her kids. Lets give her credit, that she's working and not feeding off of the states money.

One of the girls that I work with has a 4 year old daughter. The guy was killed in a car accident shen she was 6 months old. His parents want nothing to do with the kid, because they weren't married when they had the kid. Her parents aren't around either. So this leaves her with very few people to turn to. On occasion she has brought her daughter here, and we all take turns watching her. Most times, she can afford to hire a sitter while she's at work.

It's really a hard life, but she's doing well. She has another part time job and has a bunch of friends that help her, but it's not easy.

I don't have kids and don't really want them (I'm not the mothering type) so to see people that work tooth and nail to provide for their kids make me feel good. I don't know how some of these people manage.

Where was these kids father? Why wasn't he helping out? I know she didn't go to the state because they would have probably recommended giving the kids up for adoption.

My last thought is that she needed help, but no one would give it to her, so she did everything she possibly could by herself. Now she's going to suffer immesurably for it.

That just sucks.

 

[Gil]

Originally posted by TurboSmoke
Her kids are more important than her job...i mean she can always find another dish-washing gig but dead children are not quite so easy to replace....

as for staying home with them and possibly perishing in the fire with her kids....well i bet she is wishing that she had done that rather rotting in a jailcell somewhere while her children are in heaven...

its just my opinion....even poverty and empty cupboards are preferable to the tragic fire...there is no job in this planet that would keep me (nor any decent human) from protecting my kids..

All of that is quite easy for you to say. Let's change over a bit and look at this economically.
What did you pay for your last pair of shoes?
I'm wearing a pair of Merrel's that cost me $85. When I was in college (1986-1991) I spent summers mowing grass at minimum wage, which at that time was $3.35/hr. Do the math that's about $140 a week before taxes. My Freaking shoes cost more than half of that.
Min wage is now under $6.00/hr. That's less than $1,000 a month. Now factor in childcare at a place like Kindercare
That's about $175 a week or more. Subtract that out from the $240 a week pre tax income.
Do you see the problem yet? What about food, rent, utilities?

Let me simplify it for you. My shoes cost about a week's worth of groceries for a family of three (using coupons, and checking for sales).

I think it's a great thing when a two parent family can afford to have one parent at home to provide support and care for the children. But more and more that isn't the case.
It's great you have the luxury of condemning this woman from your comfy home in front of a $1,000 computer. The price of your PS2 would feed that family well for 2 weeks. The cost of one new release game would buy three pairs of shoes at Payless Shoes.

It's one thing when your "ends meet" and you're working because you can. It's a whole 'nother kettle of fish when your "ends" not only don't meet, but they haven't even been close enough to wave at each other, in a very long time.
All indications are that this woman was working poor. I think the state should just let her grieve in peace.
Of course with the cost of two funerals, she won't even be able to do that...

 

[TurboSmoke]

Originally posted by milefile
How can you say that? How do you know?

There's still nothing in the explanation of your opinion that makes me look at it more closely or from a different perspective; to put it another way, there is no explanation. You've ignored pretty much everything I said in both of my posts. Perhaps if you could provide more information to support your opinion, rather than merely invoking the abstraction "decency" (thinly vieled insult perceived, by the way), I could take your opinion seriously.

The event gives rise to many questions and most of the posts in this still short thread exhibit a knee-jerk, witch-hunt mentality that ignores facts.

Milefile my friend...i didnt intend to insult you, that wasnt the purpose of the post....and if i did it wouldnt be so thinly vieled...

the intention of the post was to put my point across and it has no explanation because non is required....its an open and shut case as far as i am concerned....

millions of people live in poverty across the world, they deal with it every day....

i see this as a question of choosing the lesser evil, on one hand she has a small risk of losing her casual job for turning up late while her kids burn in thier sleep......or she stays and waits for the child minder to arrive and at least has the chance of saving her kids when she smells the smoke....

the price of shoes simply doesnt fit into the equation...

 

[Gil]

It does when it's something we take for granted. It was a "for instance".
Speaking of shoes, I say it again. until you've walked a mile in someone else's shoes, you cannot judge them.

However you seem determined to miss my point. So, forget it.
You will always see this particular woman as wildly irresponsible. I will always be ready to cut her some slack.

You seem to have figured out what it takes to achieve bliss.
I'll leave it at that.

 

[TurboSmoke]

Originally posted by Gil
It does when it's something we take for granted. It was a "for instance".
Speaking of shoes, I say it again. until you've walked a mile in someone else's shoes, you cannot judge them.

However you seem determined to miss my point. So, forget it.
You will always see this particular woman as wildly irresponsible. I will always be ready to cut her some slack.

You seem to have figured out what it takes to achieve bliss.
I'll leave it at that.

no Gil...i havent missed your point...i read it and understood it, i happen to think differently, is that such a crime my friend?

at no point did i say that either you or milefile were wrong, in fact i happen to agree with you both on certain points but everyone is different, people have different priorities and yours and mine are different....it doesnt mean i am determined to disagree with you, like i said its a point of view, no one is wrong or right....i didnt say i was right, i just said what i would have done in her situation....like i say, different priorities...

i personally think that a 9 year old is too young to look after a one year old....i mean there are plenty of parents that will tell you how demanding and hard work it is looking after a baby...i wouldnt have left the child alone with the baby personally....but that doesnt mean i have missed your point Gil...

i dont know if it is a crime in the US but in England, it would be classed as child abandonment, you could go to prison and your kids taken into care and perhaps fostered if they are lucky.....maybe i have been conditioned by the laws here to think this is wrong i dunno, it just doesnt seem right to me....

its great that shes going out to provide her kids with food and clothes, its an instinct that is in everyone but she choose that over the stronger instinct of a mother not to abandon her children...

i realise this is an emotional topic and it is commendable that milefile brought it up, i just cannot see any excuse under any circumstance for a mother to leave her children alone while she goes to work....especially when one is just a baby....if you want me to apoligise for that belief then you'll be in for a long wait...

no insult or disrespect was intended or impled at any point in this thread...

 

[Gil]

My mistake, please forgive my ranting.
It seemed that you were wholly against what this mother did.
In other more civilised countries, like your own for instance, this is less of a problem, because the government makes better provisions for the working poor.
Here in the U.S. we would be condemning the woman on both fronts.
She would be a lazy sponge for working the system so she didn't have to work a job. And she has been villified for working and leaving her kids alone.
It is a classic no win situation.
As a society, Americans are quick to help starving kids in countries on the other side of the world. We also tend to be exceedingly bad at helping our own.
I am not too long out from being "working poor." As a result, I have a bit of a 'complex' when it comes to "shooting our wounded." Which is something we seem to do with frightening regularity.
I also tend to use odd comparisons at times.
The 'shoes' bit was an example of something we take for granted. I was trying to point out that missing a day of work for her might mean missing two days of eating. Whereas, in my case I'd have to wait a day to buy some fancy new shoes.
I guess I should have just been plain spoken about it instead of trying to "make it more real" with examples.

 

[GilesGuthrie]

It's a tough situation, totally. I wonder what the reason for the sitter failing to show was.

I can't speak for anyone else, and given that I don't have children yet, I can't really speak for myself, but... Both my wife and I are in a situation where if we were in that situation, we would be able to miss work without recourse. I'm sitting at home at the moment, working through the wonders of Outlook Web Access and Citrix (remote applications), and I'm able to be at least 75% as effective as if I were in the office. I could live like this, being at home, caring for the children, and still working.

And my employer would let me. This is because I'm in a whole different world to the mother who is the subject of this thread. I'm a skilled office worker. My job affords me rights and comforts along with its decent wage. How much of this did that lady have? Probably very little. This is a whole different story to the one posted a couple of months ago where the mother left her kids in the car and forgot about them, only to find they had asphyxiated in the heat while she was away.

We're all sitting here pontificating, ignoring the fact that there but for the grace of God go we. Poor woman. In all senses of the words.

 

[TurboSmoke]

Hi Gil,

man, i shouldnt have been such a 'hard liner' on the subject....

where i work i can take days off to look after my kid if my wife is sick, we also have a creche and can work flexi-time any time we want...its a very forward thinking organisation...(luckily for me)..

the way English law sees it is that the govt provides enough help for working mothers through tax concessions, child care support and so on...so that if you do ever leave your kid alone, you have to pay the consequences....its different in Scotland however...there is no legal age under which a child is deemed too young to look after themselves (which a lot of people are unware of here)...but we still get the help from the govt..

anyway, i am sure the last thing the girl expected was for her apartment to burn down and the courts should take her pain and sorrow into consideration.....

i am a firm believer that charity begins at home and govts should put their own countries ahead of other before handing out aid....

its a sad story....and a very tough call...

 

[milefile]

Originally posted by TurboSmoke
like i said its a point of view, no one is wrong or right....i didnt say i was right, i just said what i would have done in her situation....like i say, different priorities...

Well you did say more than that in your parenthetical interjection:

there is no job in this planet that would keep me (nor any decent human) from protecting my kids..

Which sharply labels the mother as not decent, and not only her.

 

[DGB454]

A child is more important than a job. This is true no matter who you are unless you have no conscience.
I don't know the whole story. What was her employer like? How did she get into the situation that one more day gone would cause her to loose her job? Did she miss a lot of work before this? Was her employer just a jerk who would fire her because she missed 1 day?
Like I said..I don't know the whole story but I'm guessing that for her to be that close to loosing her job already she wasn't a star employee. Never the less the whole situation is unfortunate. If I was in her shoes I don't know what I would have done. Would I trust my 9 year old to take care of my 1 year old?

I take that back..I do know what I would do. I wouldn't trust my 9 year old to take care of my 1 year old. A 9 year old taking care of themselves is one thing but taking care of a 1 year old is something totally different. When I was 9 I was never allowed to run all over the place without either my parents or another parent in sight. We had to play in the front yard of our house or a neighbors house so we were in sight.
As I said before. A child is worth more than a job.
No apologies.

 

[TurboSmoke]

Originally posted by DGB454
A child is more important than a job. This is true no matter who you are unless you have no conscience.
I don't know the whole story. What was her employer like? How
As I said before. A child is worth more than a job.
No apologies.

Thank God some agrees with me here...

 

[Solid Lifters]

I feel very sorry for this woman. When I was a firearm salesman I once worked with a woman who had two children and no husband. He was an abusive alcoholic who left her without money, or support of any kind.

She received Government help, but it wasn't much. She went to job aid and did some trainning for accounting. Our company had a vacancy and hired her through that job aid agency. Her pay in 1993 was $6.25 a hour, and minimum wage was $4.75. She had no choice, she had to leave her kids at home with no supervision.

What was she suppose to do? There was not enough money for day-care, nor did she have any family members that could care for her children as she went to work. The Government claimed she made too much money for any type of free child care. This kind of scenario is happing perhaps millions of times each day in the US.

So, should people who are poor give up their children? How much would that cost us? Why do most people in this country always treat poor people like criminals? Will jailing the woman with the two dead children really be justified? Will you feel safer knowing that our overcrowded prison system had released a more dangerous individual to make room for this woman? Why are some individuals blaming this woman for the loss of her children? I have a possible reason why. To remove any guilt or blame that something like this could happened.

It's ALL our fault that there was no supervision for these children. It's much easier for these people to shift the blame to someone else, and what better person to blame than the parent, instead of pointing out that our country allows for the neglect of it's children because we refuse to pay people a more livable wage. Greed, it kills, but we'll never admit it.

Here is another example. Right now there is a HUGE problem with poor people costing us billions in health care costs because that can't afford to see a doctor when they get sick. They end up in the hospital without the ability to pay, and we have to pay for them, with rising health care costs, and higher taxes. So, what are we going to do about this problem? Treat them like criminals too for getting sick? Some people want to go to jail, just to get free health care. I'm not joking, people have to do that.

I say raise the minimum wage to a national level of $12.00 for people over the age of 30. Raise it to $15.00 for people over tha age of 40, so forth. This is what they do in Holland, and it works pretty well, so why not here?

 

[milefile]

I've always thought a sign of honesty and strength is the ability to see things from multiple perspectives, panoramically, as it were, as opposed to having blinders on. The plethora of different lives out there in the world is hard to take. Moral condemnation narrows the focus to what it doesn't hurt to think about.

 

[TurboSmoke]

Originally posted by milefile
I've always thought a sign of honesty and strength is the ability to see things from multiple perspectives, panoramically, as it were, as opposed to having blinders on. The plethora of different lives out there in the world is hard to take. Moral condemnation narrows the focus to what it doesn't hurt to think about.

or something which others might percieve as naivety...

 

[DGB454]

Are you guys trying to make me feel bad? You think I don't care about people in need? Give me a break. I have been here long enough that you should know me much better than that. Remember...I am usually the one who argues for more assistance for the poor while you guys argue that the poor are poor because they choose to be. I am the one who is usually saying to give more to the needy while you guys are saying to hold onto your money because you earned it. I've got blinders on???? Don't make me laugh.
I don't deny that our society has lot's of socioeconomic problems. I also don't pretend to be able to see things from this womans point of view. I have known people like her and I have been there for people like her before.
A few things that bother me about this whole story is that she was to the point that she was about to be fired. She was living somewhere that was dangerous for her and her children (which in itself isn't a bad thing)yet she still choose to leave them alone.
So given what I know about this story she seems to be a person who is prone to bad judgement (or just plain didn't give a crap)when it comes to the safety and welfare of herself and her children. So..knowing what I know about this situation I still say she made a very bad judgement call that endangered the life of her 2 children.

 

[Gil]

Originally posted by DGB454
Are you guys trying to make me feel bad? You think I don't care about people in need? Give me a break. I have been here long enough that you should know me much better than that. Remember...I am usually the one who argues for more assistance for the poor while you guys argue that the poor are poor because they choose to be. I am the one who is usually saying to give more to the needy while you guys are saying to hold onto your money because you earned it. I've got blinders on???? Don't make me laugh.
I don't deny that our society has lot's of socioeconomic problems. I also don't pretend to be able to see things from this womans point of view. I have known people like her and I have been there for people like her before.
A few things that bother me about this whole story is that she was to the point that she was about to be fired. She was living somewhere that was dangerous for her and her children (which in itself isn't a bad thing)yet she still choose to leave them alone.
So given what I know about this story she seems to be a person who is prone to bad judgement (or just plain didn't give a crap)when it comes to the safety and welfare of herself and her children. So..knowing what I know about this situation I still say she made a very bad judgement call that endangered the life of her 2 children.

Dave,
I for one, was not trying to make you feel bad. I just wanted you to step back, and put yourself in her shoes for a second.
I too see where she made a bad decision. But then hindsight is always 20/20.
I know that you're an advocate for the underprivileged and undervalued.
You may drive a Rat powered Chevelle, but you're a big ol' softy.
Of course you are right regarding what we don't know about this story. We have all jumped into the assumption that suited us best.
I will say that in most min wage jobs, that some of the managers, will fire you in a second. "There is always another warm body to do your job. So, you can be here, or you can seek employment at some other sweatshop." Pretty much sums up their mentality.

That scenario works for my arguement.

In essence, I'm trying to say, I'm not trying to rile you.
Hope I didn't offend. You know how I get when the "soapbox" comes out.

 

[DGB454]

Gil,

I actually wasn't referring to you. I understand where you are comming from. I agree with you about the way some managers treat their lower paid employees. The problem is I don't know anything about her employer. I can't assume he was a jerk anymore than anyone can assume she is just a victim based on what we were given at the beginning of this thread. I may change my tune if I knew all the facts surrounding this situation.
Anyway, you didn't offend me.(well..that big ol' softy remark hurt.)
See Ya.