Dad charged for "repeatedly spanking" 3-month-old son; baby now dead (Mercedes, Texas)

Read this article carefully. This wasn't a couple that appears to have abused or killed in an "equal" manner.

Dad LUIS ESCALDON is the one who admits to "repeatedly spanking" a 3-month-old infant. That's how he explained the bruises found on the baby's legs and buttocks, you see. That was on a Saturday. Sunday morning, this POS was "allegedly" raping the baby's mother. Daddy has been arrested on both injury to a child and sexual assault charges.

You know folks, it's not that hard to fill in the dots here. It seems very likely to me that this guy terrorized this mother, the baby, and their 4 other children. It also seems very likely to me that the mother didn't have a lot of real choices here, not unless she wanted to risk more beatings either to herself or to the other kids. Yet she's been arrested for child endangerment, a felony in the state of Texas. And she's lost her kids to CPS.

Frankly, you very seldom see fathers charged with endangerment, even when they had the ability to intervene (check out the Newark, New Jersey dad who employed an abusive male babysitter with a criminal record--the post is just a couple down from here). It's a charge that's applied mostly to mothers, regardless of how much power they really had to stop the abuse.

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/news/old-110324-arrested-parents.html

Parents arrested after bruises found on dead 3-month-old

March 30, 2010 11:14 AM
By JARED TAYLOR, The Monitor

MERCEDES — Police arrested the mother and father of a 3-month-old baby boy who showed signs of abuse after he died at the hospital.

Mercedes police officers responded to a call of an unresponsive baby Sunday morning at a home on the 500 block of Ohio Street, said Police Chief Olga Maldonado.

The baby was rushed to Knapp Medical Center in Weslaco, where he died upon arrival.
Preliminary autopsy results show the baby did not die from bruises found on his behind and legs, Maldonado said.

The baby’s father, Luis Escaldon, told police the baby got the bruises after he repeatedly spanked the child on Saturday.

Escaldon was arrested Sunday on injury to a child and sexual assault charges — after the child’s mother, Brenda Luna, told police that he had raped her earlier that morning.

Because Luna also knew her baby’s spanking caused bruises but did not contact authorities, police arrested her on one count of child endangerment — a state jail felony.

Escaldon and Luna — both are Mexican nationals — were set to face the felony charges during an arraignment Monday evening in Mercedes Municipal Court. Bond information was not immediately available.

The couple’s four other children — the oldest is five years old — were turned over to Child Protective Services investigators, Maldonado said.

Injury to a child that does not cause serious injury is a third degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and up to a $10,000 fine. If the final autopsy results implicate Escaldon for killing his baby, his criminal charges could escalate to murder.