Woman murders son because she believed it would be "better for him to go to heaven."

Courtesy of the New York Daily News:  

A Kansas mom stabbed and beat her son to death because she thought he'd be better off in heaven, police said. 

Lindsey Blansett was charged with first-degree murder after allegedly killing her 10-year-old son, Caleb, on Sunday, KAKE reported. 

Caleb's 9-year-old sister was home during the grisly attack, Wellington police said. 

The 33-year-old mom took a rock and a knife to her son's bedroom after he went to sleep Sunday, Sumner County Attorney Kerwin Spencer said in a court complaint. 

Earlier that evening, Blansett "decided his life would be full of suffering and pain and that it would be better for him to go to heaven" than to "face the world's problems," the complaint said. 

She allegedly hit him with the rock and then stabbed him in the chest. 

He died in his bedroom.

Years ago I was assigned to work with a boy who was actively trying to kill himself. A lot of troubled kids make these threats to get attention but this one was deadly serious.

The reason why is because life was too hard for him and his fundamentalist parents had taught him all his life that Heaven was this amazing place where all of his pain would be taken away and he would be happy forever.

We watched him around the clock for several weeks, and intervened during numerous attempts to take his own life. I personally had to unwrap another care coordinator's shoestrings from around his neck.

And during all of this protocol forbid us from criticizing his religion or from explaining to his young man that his parents were superstitious idiots. Essentially we simply had to avoid discussing his beliefs altogether and instead discuss with him all of the wonderful possibilities that he would miss if he took his life prematurely.

Today he is a grown man, with a job and a girlfriend. He is happy.

Don't ever tell me that religion cannot be incredibly destructive.

I have seen it myself.

God is my codefendant. There are 32 states where parents can use a religious defense in court for abusing or neglecting their children. In Idaho that protection extends to manslaughter.

Courtesy of Vocativ:  

Currently, 32 states, including Idaho, provide a religious defense to felony or misdemeanor crimes specifically against children, including neglect, endangerment and abuse, according to state statutes compiled by Children’s Healthcare Is a Legal Duty (CHILD), a national advocacy group. There are 38 states that provide religious exemptions in their civil codes on child abuse and neglect, which can prevent Child Protective Services from investigating and monitoring cases of religion-based medical neglect and discourage reporting. 

Of the states that still provide a religious defense to felonies against children, Idaho remains in a league of its own. It is one of only six states that provide a religious exemption to manslaughter, negligent homicide or capital murder (the others being Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Ohio and West Virginia). But of those six, it is the only state where children are known to have died at the hands of faith-healing parents in the last 20 years. Rita Swan, CHILD’s co-founder, describes Idaho as “the worst in the country,” and she attributes the state’s high number of deaths to its overreaching religious exemption laws, which were enacted in 1972.

Swan and other child advocates argue that Idaho’s laws, and those like them, are in direct contradiction with the Supreme Court’s 1944 decision in Prince v. Massachusetts, which ruled that parental authority cannot jeopardize a child’s welfare, even in cases of religious expression. “The right to practice religion freely,” the court concluded, “does not include liberty to expose…[a] child…to ill health or death.” 

“Parents may be free to become martyrs themselves,” the decision continued. “But it does not follow they are free, in identical circumstances, to make martyrs of their children.”

Even though over the years numerous children in Idaho have died from medically treatable diseases or injuries, there is currently no plan to change this religious exemption.

Oregon also used to have a similar law in place, but then things changed: 

Outside of Oregon and Idaho, there have been 20 documented faith-healing fatalities of minors since 2008 in 10 different states, including Texas, Colorado and Pennsylvania, according to CHILD. But the death count among Followers of Christ puts Idaho well out in front as the deadliest state in the country. That distinction actually once belonged to Oregon, until a highly publicized child death in 1998 ultimately prompted prosecutors and lawmakers to act. 

Oregon, like Idaho, had a religious defense to manslaughter on the books when 11-year-old Bo Phillips died from untreated diabetes that year. His family, who were members of the Followers of Christ, prayed over him and anointed his body with oil instead of taking him to a doctor. It was the first time authorities felt they had a clear case of abuse in a faith-healing child death. But the district attorney for the county, Terry Gustafson, declined to prosecute the boy’s parents because of ambiguities in the state law. 

Gustafson’s decision triggered public outcry across the state. The Oregonian newspaper in Portland, the state’s largest paper, launched an investigative series on faith-healing deaths, which found that of the 78 children buried in one Followers cemetery in Oregon City since 1955, 21 had died from treatable illnesses. Shortly after, ABC’s 20/20 and Diane Sawyer brought national attention to the state’s faith-healing controversy with a prime-time segment on the Followers. By 1999, legislators had eliminated religious protections in cases of manslaughter and criminal mistreatment. 

Clearly what needs to happen in Idaho is the same kind of media scrutiny that took place in Oregon. However it would be incredibly sad if another child had to die in order to trigger that response.

Sometimes people ask me why I find religion so threatening. Honestly sometimes I just don't know where to begin.

Could it be that it is used as an excuse to hate those who supposedly the Bible deems worthy of hate?

Could it be how religion is used to oppress women?

Could it be how religion has negatively impacted our views of human sexuality?

Could it be that it is used to undermine our teaching of science?

Or perhaps it could simply be that it allows terrible people, to do terrible things, and defend their actions by using God as the scapegoat.

President Obama makes perfectly reasonable statement about the problems working parents have in finding quality childcare, which gets cherry picked by conservatives as being an attack on stay-at-home moms. Well you know who HAS to weigh in on this!

"Too often parents have no choice but to put their kids in cheaper daycare, that maybe doesn't have the kinds of programming that makes a big difference in a child's development. And sometime there may just not be any slots, or the best programs may be too far away. And sometimes someone, usually mom, leaves the workplace to stay home with the kids, which then leaves her earning a lower wage for the rest of her life as a result. And that's not a choice want Americans to make."

Clearly the President was talking about the problems facing two income families who are faced with problems finding quality childcare. It was NOT directed at families where the male earns an income which allows his wife to be a stay-at-home mother. 

However THAT is exactly how it is being purposefully misinterpreted by the Right Wing professional outrage machine. And right now the conservatives smell blood in the water and the sharks are beginning to circle.

And if there is any hint of weakness on the President's part, you know who will soon come sniffing around for a taste.

And gee the headline of her Facebook post starts off so reasonably:

Obama Declares Stay-at-Home Moms Aren't Worth a Hill of Beans; Says It's a Choice 'We Don't Want Americans to Make’

I will spare you the entire thing as I think you can already imagine how ugly and fact free it will be. 

However here are a few moosenuggets for your perusal: 

On behalf of former and current stay-at-homers, including my girlfriends who still get together to bake cookies for the bake sale (see photos in my kitchen above), and volunteer to coach kids ball teams, and man the church's food bank, and entertain latchkey kids, and all that other obnoxiously "housewifey" stuff, the President needs to be spanked. 

Number one I think most of her "girlfriends" are on the SarahPAC payroll, and number two waht kind of person suggests that the President of the United States should be "spanked?"

It seems you'd shackle us by your snobbish shunning of one traditional lifestyle choice while taking advantage of power to manifest your liberal view by manipulating public opinion and resources to diminish moms who put career on hold to raise a family. You are really messed up. And you're so 1960's. 

Now she is talking about "shackles?"
 
You really are stuck in a contorted kind of '60s feminism where you obviously don't trust women to make their own decisions, so you're frustrated. 

And now she is suggesting that the President is "frustrated?" Anybody else picking up on a theme here?

Now, I'm sure your star struck female minions in the media will writhe and wiggle in defense of you on this, they always do, even though you just marginalized a most valuable sector of American society while having the gall to admit that, for you, it's only all about the money. 

"Female minions" will "writhe and wiggle?" Well so much more subtlety.

And then Palin goes for the jugular.

Perhaps you never witnessed the benefits a "full-time mom" provides a family, a community, our schools, our nation, but you're a big boy now so figure it out yourself without me lecturing you on the beauty of a homemaker. Suffice it to say "stay-at-home moms" make the world go 'round. 

- Sarah Palin

Okay now that was just uncalled for. Suggesting that the President does not appreciate stay-at-home mothers because his worked out of the home is a low blow even for Palin.

I understand that it undermines Sarah Palin, and the conservatives, sense of outrage to recognize that the President was NOT suggesting that he did not want mothers to stay at home with their children, but the fact is that what he was saying is that he did not want either parent to be forced out of work due to poor childcare choices.

The President was making his speech  at the Rhode Island College in Providence, and the topic was "Women and the Economy."  I think THAT audience had little difficulty understanding that the President was discussing ways in which the government could assist parents and help them to compete financially with their counterparts at work who do not have to worry about also meeting the needs of their children.

Sadly that is a sophisticated message which rings hollow in the ears of the ignorant.

Bristol Palin, or at least the woman who plays Bristol Palin on the internet, is horrified by mother of 47 year old Down syndrome son saying she wishes she had aborted him.

Okay so just for fun I tool a jaunt over to the Brancy's blog to see what's up in the land of denial.

As it turns out Nancy French and Bristol, assuming Bristol has read what it printed under her name, are very, very upset at an article in the Daily Mail about a 69 year old woman's heartbreaking admission that she wishes she had never had her Down syndrome son, now 47 years old.

Here is what Brancy had to say:

I can’t even believe what I just read. Gillian Relf, the mother of a 47-year-old man with Down syndrome, publicly said she wishes she’d had an abortion. Her son has made her life so difficult, she wishes he had never been allowed to live. 

Can you actually claim to love someone and wish they were dead at the same time? 

If that’s not horrifying enough, she spoke “in support of the 92 per cent of women who choose to abort their babies after discovering they have Down’s syndrome.” Parents of children with Down syndrome (including my own parents!) have shown the greatest demonstration of selfless love I’ve ever seen. To read this mom’s statements that are so opposite is just stunning.

Actually I think that any person who has sat at the bedside of a dying loved one knows exactly what it is like to love somebody and wish them dead at the same time. At some point their pain is just impossible to endure and all you want is for them to find peace, even if it means you will never have them in your life again. 

Brancy goes on to say this: 

My family probably wouldn’t have chosen to have a child with Down syndrome. But God gave us Trig – and our family wouldn’t be complete without him! Now, I realize that kids with Down syndrome are amazing and wonderful – we are soooooo blessed to have him in our lives.

Actually that is a lie. Her family absolutely DID choose to have Trig in their lives. He is not Sarah's child, and I have no reason to believe that he is Bristol's child, so yes he was absolutely brought into the family as a choice. (Hopefully I will have more on that at a later date.)

By the way the woman, Gillian Relf, anticipated this response and this is what she said in the article:

But I'd challenge any one of them to walk a mile in the shoes of mothers like me, saddled for life as I am, with a needy, difficult, exasperating child who will never grow up, before they judge us. They should experience how it feels to parent a grown man, who is no more able to care for himself than a toddler - and at a time of life when your children should, all things being equal, be taking care of you. They should know how it feels to live every single day under a crushing weight of guilt. They should know how it feels to watch Stephen's constant suffering and witness the almost daily destruction wreaked on all our lives. 

As you all know I actually work with children and parents who are dealing with Down syndrome, FAS, ADHD, Reactive Attachment Disorder, PTSD,  Mental Retardation, etc., and I can tell you that wishing not to have had a child with such complicated and disruptive issues is almost universal among the parents.

They don't always say it out loud to support staff, but they certainly discuss it in private, and sometimes you can simply see it written all over their faces.

The idea that all babies are a gift from God and that HE will provide you with the strength to deal with any complications which might arise is happy holy horseshit.

The truth is that sometimes these parents simply have to give up and walk away, and put their children into residential facilities or foster homes. Sometime they mistreat their children out of sheer frustration, even though they realize it is not the child's fault. And sometimes they contemplate, or actually follow through with, plans to take their own lives. (One of the worse cases I ever dealt with.)

We have already seen that Sarah is having significant trouble parenting Trig, and let me tell you that is only going to get worse, especially when he hits his teen years.

I predict right here and now that Trig ends up in a facility, either in state or out, that will care for him within the next ten years or so.

Simply put neither Sarah Palin, or any of her family members, have the intelligence or patience to deal with a Down syndrome child for the long haul.

And that is why judging this poor woman, who has spent the last 47 years selflessly putting her child's needs above her own, should never be done by the likes of Bristol Palin.

OR her internet doppelganger.