Teddy Bear for sale for food

[Joe]

Yesterday, when the internet returned to service (we had a fire outage here in Lake County) I was horrified to read a news report of a seven year old boy attempting to sell his teddy bear so that he could buy food. This was in Ohio. He was standing outside a drugstore when he came to the attention of a police officer who went ahead and bought him some food while allowing him to retain his teddy bear. The appropriate agencies became involved and it was discovered that he had three brothers and all were living in incredible filth. The parents were arrested. Just when you think you've read every fictional horror about the abuse of children there could possibly be, real life jumps in with an improved version. I'm not sufficiently computer aware to post one of those address thingies, but even I could Google it. I also know there is such a thing as a paragraph, but this screen won't let me make one.

[ChrisR]

One of the reports I saw said that the 7-year-old was the youngest of the boys, the oldest being 15 and 17, none of whom had eaten in several days. What sort of "family" dynamics are involved when it's the youngest kid who goes out to do something?

[Graeme]

Here is one link: http://www.itv.com/news/2016-08-16/starving-boy-7-found-trying-to-sell-teddy-bear-for-food/

There were others, too. There were four other brothers, aged 11, 12, 15 and 17.

[Chris James]

It's easy to have kids...just forget the condom. It is hard being a parent, and the mother and father of these boys know nothing about being a parent. What is unsettling is that no one seemed to notice.

How do you have a cesspool of a home in any neighborhood without the neighbors noticing? Starving children are noticeable...weren't they in school? Hungry kids in schools act out, fall asleep in class, and are fairly obvious to any trained teacher.

​The parents are in jail, for the moment. When they are released we should have a watch list for idiots like this just as we have for terrorists. Those kids should never be returned to their parents...never, ever.

[colinian]

Shows how close the parents (and the kids) were to the "family members" since they didn't discover and/or intercede to rescue the boys. Also, none of the boys could have been in school because their situation whould have been discovered there and the Ohio version of Child Protective Services would have been brought in to rescue them.

Colin

[Merkin]

This account is heartbreaking on so many levels.