Dad gets anger management, probation, and weekends in jail for torturing 11-year-old son (Staten Island, New York)

So sad that this boy is showing a devotion to his (deadbeat) "stay-at-home" father that will never be returned...As a result, dad JAMES MOSS will get just weekends in jail for his horrific abuse of his 11-year-old son. The basic facts: what this daddy did was nothing short of sadistic torture. All the pretty apologies and appeals regarding this "lovable" dad don't change the basic facts of what he did.

If a mother had done this, she would have been called out for what she was: a demented sicko. Look at how Casey Anthony is demonized--and we still don't know what really happened to her daughter. This guy openly tortures a child, and everybody is falling all over themselves saying how "caring" he is! A daddy who didn't even get this child medical attention--even after deliberately burning him and THROWING HIM NAKED INTO AN OVEN!!! Excuse ME? If this is caring, I'll take indifference for $100. Double standard much???

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44038647/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/?gt1=43001#.TjyvHmGSLHo

Boy who was stuffed in oven: Don't jail my dad
Prosecutors sought 7 years but, after son's emotional plea, father gets weekends in jail

updated 8/5/2011 4:06:46 PM ET 2011-08-05

 NEW YORK — A Staten Island boy, whose father burned his hands on the stove and then tossed him naked into an oven, begged a Staten Island judge on Friday to go easy on his father. The youngster's emotional appeal worked.

"He made a big mistake, but really somewhere in his heart, he is funny, lovable, caring, and a great father," Chris Moss, 11, said of his father, James, who admitted to the horrific crime. "Everybody in my family ... is giving him a second chance, will you? I just can't see my dad taken away from me. Right now I'm crying because he is the only dad I need."

The Staten Island district attorney's office asked for the maximum sentence, seven years in prison, arguing that Moss inhumanely punished his son last year because he thought he stole $20 from his wallet.

Moss was sentenced to four months of weekends in prison at Rikers Island. The 53-year-old will also be put on probation for five years, must live away from his son for one year and take anger management classes.

"This court feels compelled to temper justice with compassion," said Judge Robert Collini, according to the Staten Island Advance. The judge said Moss had shown "uninhibited remorse," the paper reported.

Erin Moss told the court her husband of 24 years worked part time as a maintenance man and never complained about staying home with his two children as "Mr. Mom" while she studied nursing.

"This is not something that ever happened in our life," she said. "I was the disciplinarian. He was the softie."

She said that on May 12, 2010, he "snapped and lost it."

Prosecutors say Moss beat the boy with a spatula, put his hands over two hot oven burners until the skin peeled, punched him in the face and then shoved him into an oven for several minutes.

"I'm going to burn you alive," Moss reportedly yelled, according to court papers.

He did not turn on the oven. The boy's hands were burned when his father held them over the burners.

Later, as skin peeled from the boy's singed hands, Moss refused to get his son medical attention, prosecutors said. The father ordered the boy to sit naked on the floor "like a dog," prosecutors said.

Erin Moss, who was not home at the time of the abuse, eventually took her son to a hospital, where the boy was treated for second- and third-degree burns and cuts.

Moss pleaded guilty to all seven counts of the indictment against him, including two counts of second-degree assault, which carried a possible seven-year sentence.

"We made what we believed was a very persuasive sentence recommendation to the court that significant jail time was appropriate considering the harm that was inflicted upon this child at the hands of his own father," said Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan. "The judge in this case imposed a sentence which he believed was right, considering everything that was before him."

When expressing his remorse before the court, James Moss expressed admiration for his son.

"My son is a better man than me," he said, according to the Advance. "I'm very sorry for what I did."