Another violent father who never should have received custody. Like a lot of guys, he seems to have increasingly coupled with the women who deserved him.
If this had been a custodial mother, she would be accused of failure to protect and end up doing hard time. But since it's a dad, well, he'll probably just play the Clueless Dad card and pay no penalty whatsoever.
By the way, this is a familiar theme with abusive custodial fathers. Since their motivations are all about punishment/control of the mother, and not about what's best fot the child or any desire to actively parent, they frequently dump the child on the new (resentful) wife or girlfriend.
Dad is identified as DAVE WHYTE.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/03/30/kenai-whyte-was-child-left-danger/ApI0rd9rADTrExHytGR5eP/story.html?event=event25
Kenai Whyte was a child left in danger
SUZANNE KREITER/GLOBE STAFF
Ashley Young is the mother of 3-year-old Kenai Whyte.
By Yvonne Abraham globe columnist
March 30, 2016
Ashley Young knew her son was in danger of being hurt. She was wrong, it seems, about who would do the hurting.
Young thought little Kenai Whyte’s father, Dave Whyte, was a danger to him — and she had good reason to think so. But prosecutors say it was Whyte’s wife, Marie Buie, who beat the child horribly on Jan. 31. The 3-year-old died two days later.
The court documents and police reports are gut-wrenching reading. From the day he was born, the toddler who loved firetrucks and Lightning McQueen was surrounded by threats and fear, the adults in his life battling and abusing each other, sometimes over him.
“I feel as if my child is in danger with his father,” Young wrote in a 2013 filing. “If he can beat on me and abuse me, I feel he can do the same to my son.”
Kenai’s father left a trail of police reports and restraining orders testifying to his abusiveness. Young said Whyte’s violence drove her to a shelter for domestic abuse victims. And later, she took out restraining orders against Whyte for pushing her against a wall and for visiting Kenai’s day care center to try to get her new address.
Marie Buie surrendered to police for allegedly causing harm to Kenai Whyte, who died Feb. 2.
And she wasn’t the only one afraid of him. Police called to Whyte’s home in August of 2013 reported that he had pulled Buie’s hair and cut her hand. A year later, he was charged with assault and battery after he grabbed Buie by the throat. His mother, too, took out a restraining order against Whyte around the same time, saying her son had threatened to kill her.
Buie was trouble, too, according to police reports. She was twice arrested for assault and battery: once for stabbing a neighbor and once for hitting Whyte with a bottle, biting him, and pushing him down some stairs because, she told police, she was frustrated that he had left her to care for Kenai alone.
As ever in these impossible cases, it fell to the state to find a path for Kenai through the morass. The Department of Children and Families had been watching him since he was a baby, and checkups showed he was doing fine. A spokeswoman would not say whether DCF ran criminal background checks on the parents’ partners, citing privacy concerns. New rules announced Monday will make those checks mandatory.
If the probate judges mediating custody disputes between Young and Whyte knew about the father’s propensity for violence, they were apparently unperturbed by it. Whyte was granted full legal custody and half-physical custody of Kenai. Young, representing herself before the court (Whyte had an attorney), tried to change that late last year, but she missed a court date after her baby was born prematurely. So Whyte prevailed.
It is possible that, presented with this cavalcade of dysfunction, the court came to the measured (but mistaken) conclusion that Kenai was safe in his father’s home.
It is possible, too, that what happened here is what happens too often when family court judges are presented with allegations of domestic abuse: The victim of the abuse is disbelieved and penalized. Their fragile state in the courtroom can make them seem disruptive or irrational. Worse, abusers can convince judges that the victims are using abuse claims to gain greater custody rights.
Courts can focus too hard on the breach between the parents, losing track of who is hitting whom — and whether the violence also endangers the child.
“Judges seem to care more about parental alienation,” said David Adams, head of Emerge, a counseling program for abusers. “So much so, that some victims’ attorneys aren’t even raising domestic violence in custody disputes.”
Whatever the reason, Young lost her bid to have her son spend less time in his father’s home. So there Kenai was, alone with Buie on the January night prosecutors say she brutally beat him.
You would like to think his parents fought this hard over their child because they both treasured him and wanted to protect him. But then you have to confront the realization that even a little boy as loved as Kenai Whyte seems to have been left in harm’s way to die.
Showing posts with label Massachusetts. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Massachusetts. Show all posts
Thursday, March 31, 2016
Sunday, February 7, 2016
3-year-old boy beaten to death at home of custodial dad with history of DV--just hours after CPS said he was well-fed and clean (Revere, Massachusetts)
My heart just sobs for this mother.
This little boy's death was absolutely preventable. But this is what happens when the legal system refuses to take men's violence against women seriously, when criminals are allowed to have domestic violence charges dismissed multiple times. This is what happens when mothers are punished for being the victim of a crime, and not the criminal, and are forced into homelessness. And most of all, this is the logical result of the INSANE FATHER'S RIGHTS-INSPIRED POLICY OF GIVING WIFE BEATERS CUSTODY OF YOUNG CHILDREN. What the hell do they think is going to happen when these violent men are given custody of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers?
Dad is identified as DAVE WHYTE JR. See the Killer Dads and Custody list for Massachusetts.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/05/governor-baker-dcf-working-with-district-attorney-death-year-old/wLvc9mktekovymwv2XsuOK/story.html
Mother of toddler who died shares his final days
Revere, MA., 02/05/16, Ashely Young describes the condition her son was in when taken from her ex-husband's house. She is the mother of the three year old Kenai who died after being in the custody of her ex-husband. After his death DCF took her other 2 children from her.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff
Ashely Young is the mother of 3-year-old Kenai Whyte, who died Tuesday.
By Evan Allen Globe Staff
February 05, 2016
Ashley Young slipped into her son’s hospital bed Monday afternoon, kissed his face and hands, and sang him the songs he had always loved to dance to.
“Pooh Bear, Pooh Bear, I love my Pooh Bear.”
She said she told the toddler that he had to wake up: They had to decorate his bedroom and they had a trip planned to Disney World.
But 3-year-old Kenai Whyte did not move. His body was bruised, cut, scraped, and swollen, and the doctors said he could not hear her, she said. He died Tuesday, his mother curled at his side.
“Mommy will find out what happened to you,” Young, 27, said she promised him. On Sunday night, Kenai Whyte’s battered body was found in his father’s home. He died from his injuries on Tuesday.
Kenai’s death is under investigation, and police have released few details about the surrounding circumstances. The boy was found unresponsive at his father’s house on Alpine Street in Roxbury Sunday night, just days after a Department of Children and Families social worker reported that he was well-fed and clean.
Officials have not yet determined what killed him. Young said the doctors told her it appeared as though the child had been beaten. Police declined to comment.
Governor Charlie Baker said Friday that the DCF is working with the Suffolk district attorney’s office to determine what happened during the two days between a social worker’s check on Kenai and the moment he was rushed to a hospital on the verge of death.
“In the short term, the big issue is: What happened between between the 29th and the 31st?” Baker told reporters Friday.
The department is reviewing its handling of the case.
In the wake of the boy’s death, DCF removed another child from his father’s house, DCF has said, and Young said the agency also took her two daughters, an infant and a 6-year-old.
In the same breath, Young said, she had to tell her older daughter that her brother had died and that she couldn’t come home with Young and her fiance. Young said she had not been given an explanation for why her daughters were taken. The DCF declined to comment on any aspect of the case.
On Friday night, Young sat in her Revere apartment assembling a memorial for her son, fitting pictures of his smiling face into frames. He was a rambunctious child who couldn’t wait to be a “big boy” and loved to do everything by himself, she said. He was proud to be a big brother and nicknamed his baby sister “Peanuts.”
“It hurts that nobody knows what happened to him,” Young said.
The boy’s short life was marked by upheaval. Young fled her marriage to Kenai’s father, Dave Whyte Jr., when their son was just 3 months old, according to Young and court documents, which allege that Whyte abused her. They lived in a domestic violence shelter with Young’s older daughter for another three months, she said, then spent a year living with Young’s mother before moving to another shelter, then a motel. She had been in her apartment less than a month when Kenai died.
The DCF was involved from the time the boy was a baby, according to court documents. Young shared physical custody of Kenai with the boy’s father, who had legal custody. Whyte’s criminal record includes multiple dismissed charges of domestic violence against women. Reached by phone, he declined to comment.
But in the last month, Young said, things were looking up.
She moved into the new apartment with her children and her fiance, and Kenai was excited about decorating his bedroom with characters from “PAW Patrol,” a TV show he loved. It was the first time he had a space of his own.
Young’s infant daughter, born prematurely in November, was finally home from the hospital. Snow was coming, and Young bought a snowman-making kit. She got Kenai a snowsuit. They got Internet service. The apartment felt like home.
Last Thursday, when Young went to drop Kenai off at day care, where his father would pick him up later, the boy asked if he could stay home with her, she said.
“Mommy will see you soon,” she told him.
Young can’t bear to open her day planner and see the list of pants, shirts, and sneakers to buy for Kenai and her daughters. She went grocery shopping and found herself unable to buy strawberries or doughnuts — Kenai’s favorite. Her fiance offered her an orange, and she broke down sobbing: Kenai loved oranges. Her fiance threw out every orange in the apartment.
“When I get the kids back . . . my son won’t be here,” Young said.
On the dresser in his bedroom, where she said she goes twice a day to say good morning and good night to Kenai,
Young has a print of his hand and foot, taken in the moments after the doctors declared him dead. A wisp of his baby-fine hair lies in a bag in a cushioned blue box. The prayer blanket they covered him with in the hospital is folded neatly; the two bears he was holding when he died sit on the dresser and on his bed. She will keep one and bury the other with her child. Young has not been able to make funeral plans yet, she said.
“He is my world; he is my king,” she said, and with a gasp caught herself speaking in the present tense. She started to correct herself, then shook her head. “No — he is. I’m gonna keep it that way. He still will always be.”
This little boy's death was absolutely preventable. But this is what happens when the legal system refuses to take men's violence against women seriously, when criminals are allowed to have domestic violence charges dismissed multiple times. This is what happens when mothers are punished for being the victim of a crime, and not the criminal, and are forced into homelessness. And most of all, this is the logical result of the INSANE FATHER'S RIGHTS-INSPIRED POLICY OF GIVING WIFE BEATERS CUSTODY OF YOUNG CHILDREN. What the hell do they think is going to happen when these violent men are given custody of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers?
Dad is identified as DAVE WHYTE JR. See the Killer Dads and Custody list for Massachusetts.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/02/05/governor-baker-dcf-working-with-district-attorney-death-year-old/wLvc9mktekovymwv2XsuOK/story.html
Mother of toddler who died shares his final days
Revere, MA., 02/05/16, Ashely Young describes the condition her son was in when taken from her ex-husband's house. She is the mother of the three year old Kenai who died after being in the custody of her ex-husband. After his death DCF took her other 2 children from her.
Suzanne Kreiter/Globe staff
Ashely Young is the mother of 3-year-old Kenai Whyte, who died Tuesday.
By Evan Allen Globe Staff
February 05, 2016
Ashley Young slipped into her son’s hospital bed Monday afternoon, kissed his face and hands, and sang him the songs he had always loved to dance to.
“Pooh Bear, Pooh Bear, I love my Pooh Bear.”
She said she told the toddler that he had to wake up: They had to decorate his bedroom and they had a trip planned to Disney World.
But 3-year-old Kenai Whyte did not move. His body was bruised, cut, scraped, and swollen, and the doctors said he could not hear her, she said. He died Tuesday, his mother curled at his side.
“Mommy will find out what happened to you,” Young, 27, said she promised him. On Sunday night, Kenai Whyte’s battered body was found in his father’s home. He died from his injuries on Tuesday.
Kenai’s death is under investigation, and police have released few details about the surrounding circumstances. The boy was found unresponsive at his father’s house on Alpine Street in Roxbury Sunday night, just days after a Department of Children and Families social worker reported that he was well-fed and clean.
Officials have not yet determined what killed him. Young said the doctors told her it appeared as though the child had been beaten. Police declined to comment.
Governor Charlie Baker said Friday that the DCF is working with the Suffolk district attorney’s office to determine what happened during the two days between a social worker’s check on Kenai and the moment he was rushed to a hospital on the verge of death.
“In the short term, the big issue is: What happened between between the 29th and the 31st?” Baker told reporters Friday.
The department is reviewing its handling of the case.
In the wake of the boy’s death, DCF removed another child from his father’s house, DCF has said, and Young said the agency also took her two daughters, an infant and a 6-year-old.
In the same breath, Young said, she had to tell her older daughter that her brother had died and that she couldn’t come home with Young and her fiance. Young said she had not been given an explanation for why her daughters were taken. The DCF declined to comment on any aspect of the case.
On Friday night, Young sat in her Revere apartment assembling a memorial for her son, fitting pictures of his smiling face into frames. He was a rambunctious child who couldn’t wait to be a “big boy” and loved to do everything by himself, she said. He was proud to be a big brother and nicknamed his baby sister “Peanuts.”
“It hurts that nobody knows what happened to him,” Young said.
The boy’s short life was marked by upheaval. Young fled her marriage to Kenai’s father, Dave Whyte Jr., when their son was just 3 months old, according to Young and court documents, which allege that Whyte abused her. They lived in a domestic violence shelter with Young’s older daughter for another three months, she said, then spent a year living with Young’s mother before moving to another shelter, then a motel. She had been in her apartment less than a month when Kenai died.
The DCF was involved from the time the boy was a baby, according to court documents. Young shared physical custody of Kenai with the boy’s father, who had legal custody. Whyte’s criminal record includes multiple dismissed charges of domestic violence against women. Reached by phone, he declined to comment.
But in the last month, Young said, things were looking up.
She moved into the new apartment with her children and her fiance, and Kenai was excited about decorating his bedroom with characters from “PAW Patrol,” a TV show he loved. It was the first time he had a space of his own.
Young’s infant daughter, born prematurely in November, was finally home from the hospital. Snow was coming, and Young bought a snowman-making kit. She got Kenai a snowsuit. They got Internet service. The apartment felt like home.
Last Thursday, when Young went to drop Kenai off at day care, where his father would pick him up later, the boy asked if he could stay home with her, she said.
“Mommy will see you soon,” she told him.
Young can’t bear to open her day planner and see the list of pants, shirts, and sneakers to buy for Kenai and her daughters. She went grocery shopping and found herself unable to buy strawberries or doughnuts — Kenai’s favorite. Her fiance offered her an orange, and she broke down sobbing: Kenai loved oranges. Her fiance threw out every orange in the apartment.
“When I get the kids back . . . my son won’t be here,” Young said.
On the dresser in his bedroom, where she said she goes twice a day to say good morning and good night to Kenai,
Young has a print of his hand and foot, taken in the moments after the doctors declared him dead. A wisp of his baby-fine hair lies in a bag in a cushioned blue box. The prayer blanket they covered him with in the hospital is folded neatly; the two bears he was holding when he died sit on the dresser and on his bed. She will keep one and bury the other with her child. Young has not been able to make funeral plans yet, she said.
“He is my world; he is my king,” she said, and with a gasp caught herself speaking in the present tense. She started to correct herself, then shook her head. “No — he is. I’m gonna keep it that way. He still will always be.”
Friday, September 25, 2015
Sole custody dad due in court on assault charges; son still in coma (East Brookfield, Massachusetts)
This poor little boy has been in a coma for over two months now--not good.
Somehow, this crazy piece of sh** was favored over the mother and grandmother for child custody--fathers rights, you know. Even ongoing CPS "monitoring" didn't save this boy.
Dad is identified as RANDALL LINTS. We've posted on him before.
http://www.telegram.com/article/20150923/NEWS/150929579
Injured Hardwick boy's father due in court Oct. 21
By Kim Ring
Telegram & Gazette Staff Posted Sep. 23, 2015 at 9:09 PM
EAST BROOKFIELD - A Hardwick father accused of beating and starving his 7-year-old son is due back in Western Worcester District Court October 21.
Randall Lints, 26, who lived at 16 Bridge St., in the Gilbertville section of Hardwick, is charged with assault and battery on a child with substantial injury, permitting substantial injury to a child, reckless endangerment of a child and permitting injury to a child. His son, Jack Loiselle, is now in a rehabilitation facility where, at last word, he was stable but unresponsive, according to state officials.
Mr. Lints was charged when Jack ended up comatose in his second-floor apartment July 14 after allegedly being abused. The child was being monitored by the state Department of Children and Families over concerns that Mr. Lints was withholding food and water from the child in an attempt to manage his behavior, court documents show.
The father of three children had custody of his son for about a year. Before that Jack had been cared for by his grandparents and became the subject of a custody battle involving them. He lived with his mother, Amber Loiselle, for a time during his early years.
Mr.Lints had a court date on Wednesday but did not appear in the courtroom. A spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. said his next appearance was scheduled for Oct. 21.
Somehow, this crazy piece of sh** was favored over the mother and grandmother for child custody--fathers rights, you know. Even ongoing CPS "monitoring" didn't save this boy.
Dad is identified as RANDALL LINTS. We've posted on him before.
http://www.telegram.com/article/20150923/NEWS/150929579
Injured Hardwick boy's father due in court Oct. 21
By Kim Ring
Telegram & Gazette Staff Posted Sep. 23, 2015 at 9:09 PM
EAST BROOKFIELD - A Hardwick father accused of beating and starving his 7-year-old son is due back in Western Worcester District Court October 21.
Randall Lints, 26, who lived at 16 Bridge St., in the Gilbertville section of Hardwick, is charged with assault and battery on a child with substantial injury, permitting substantial injury to a child, reckless endangerment of a child and permitting injury to a child. His son, Jack Loiselle, is now in a rehabilitation facility where, at last word, he was stable but unresponsive, according to state officials.
Mr. Lints was charged when Jack ended up comatose in his second-floor apartment July 14 after allegedly being abused. The child was being monitored by the state Department of Children and Families over concerns that Mr. Lints was withholding food and water from the child in an attempt to manage his behavior, court documents show.
The father of three children had custody of his son for about a year. Before that Jack had been cared for by his grandparents and became the subject of a custody battle involving them. He lived with his mother, Amber Loiselle, for a time during his early years.
Mr.Lints had a court date on Wednesday but did not appear in the courtroom. A spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. said his next appearance was scheduled for Oct. 21.
Saturday, September 5, 2015
Sole custody abusive dad subject of DCF child abuse report (Hardwick, Massachusetts)
We've reported on this case before. Abusive dad RANDALL LINTS had sole custody. And yet the Fathers Rights guys in Massachusetts still wail about how discriminated against they are in custody matters. Total bullsh**. The reality is that the system bends over backwards to accommodate abusive fathers in custodial matters, and won't interfere with the father's "rights" till it's often too late.
http://www.whdh.com/story/29960177/dcf-to-release-report-on-hardwick-child-abuse-investigation
DCF releases report on Hardwick child abuse investigation
Posted: Sep 04, 2015 10:16 AM Updated: Sep 05, 2015 5:11 PM
Hardwick (WHDH) - The Department of Children and Families released on Friday a report on its investigation into what led a young Hardwick boy to be hospitalized.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker held a press conference on Friday and said the report was intended to identify failures of DCF processes that led to the injures sustained by 7-year-old Jack Loiselle. "These kids deserve the same chances other kids have," Baker said of children in DCF care. "To go to school, play with their friends, and find the kind of security, predictability and unconditional support that most of us take for granted so that they can grow, learn and succeed."
Baker said the report showed that DCF, despite its best intentions and efforts, does not have the policy framework, operating rules and other aspects that are required to properly served children. Several policies are more than 10 years old.
"DCF does not have a parental capability review policy for all cases involving custody issues," he said. "Neither the courts, nor DCF, did enough diligence concerning the childhood of Jack's biological father. His own childhood was enormously troubled and should have been factored into every decision concerning Jack's care, well being and safety."
By Jan. 1, the Western Massachusetts region of DCF will return to its previous management structure by recreating the Central Massachusetts region, costing between $1 million and $2 million.
"DCF has the authority to recruit, hire and train the social work team and the staff it needs to deal with rising case load and if we need to we will find the money to support the department's efforts," he said.
Baker said many people who work in DCF do good work every day, but the systemic issues show that much more needs to be done in order to keep children safe.
According to authorities, Loiselle weighed just 38 pounds.
The 7-year-old was unconscious and suffering from starvation and dehydration.
He had bruises on his face and bleach burns on his hands and knees.
At last check, he remains unresponsive at a long-term rehabilitation facility.
DCF became involved with the family in February, eight months after Randall Lints was granted sole custody of his son.
Police arrested and charged Lints a week after Jack was taken into intensive care.
Governor Charlie Baker will discuss the case Friday afternoon.
http://www.whdh.com/story/29960177/dcf-to-release-report-on-hardwick-child-abuse-investigation
DCF releases report on Hardwick child abuse investigation
Posted: Sep 04, 2015 10:16 AM Updated: Sep 05, 2015 5:11 PM
Hardwick (WHDH) - The Department of Children and Families released on Friday a report on its investigation into what led a young Hardwick boy to be hospitalized.
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker held a press conference on Friday and said the report was intended to identify failures of DCF processes that led to the injures sustained by 7-year-old Jack Loiselle. "These kids deserve the same chances other kids have," Baker said of children in DCF care. "To go to school, play with their friends, and find the kind of security, predictability and unconditional support that most of us take for granted so that they can grow, learn and succeed."
Baker said the report showed that DCF, despite its best intentions and efforts, does not have the policy framework, operating rules and other aspects that are required to properly served children. Several policies are more than 10 years old.
"DCF does not have a parental capability review policy for all cases involving custody issues," he said. "Neither the courts, nor DCF, did enough diligence concerning the childhood of Jack's biological father. His own childhood was enormously troubled and should have been factored into every decision concerning Jack's care, well being and safety."
By Jan. 1, the Western Massachusetts region of DCF will return to its previous management structure by recreating the Central Massachusetts region, costing between $1 million and $2 million.
"DCF has the authority to recruit, hire and train the social work team and the staff it needs to deal with rising case load and if we need to we will find the money to support the department's efforts," he said.
Baker said many people who work in DCF do good work every day, but the systemic issues show that much more needs to be done in order to keep children safe.
According to authorities, Loiselle weighed just 38 pounds.
The 7-year-old was unconscious and suffering from starvation and dehydration.
He had bruises on his face and bleach burns on his hands and knees.
At last check, he remains unresponsive at a long-term rehabilitation facility.
DCF became involved with the family in February, eight months after Randall Lints was granted sole custody of his son.
Police arrested and charged Lints a week after Jack was taken into intensive care.
Governor Charlie Baker will discuss the case Friday afternoon.
Tuesday, August 25, 2015
Dad found guilty of assaulting 3-month-old baby; boy, now 3-years old, has permanent disabilities (Danvers, Massachusetts)
Dad is identified as DANIEL GREEN.
http://www.salemnews.com/news/local_news/father-guilty-in-shaken-baby-case/article_da0ee491-b354-5ea4-bb3f-70ad18c52d8a.html
Father guilty in shaken baby case
Danvers: Former resident guilty of assault, battery on a child with substantial injury
Posted: Monday, August 24, 2015 9:55 pm
BY JULIE MANGANIS STAFF WRITER
A former Danvers resident is facing up to 15 years in state prison, after a judge on Monday found him guilty of causing life-altering injuries to his then-3-month-old son.
The verdict against Daniel Green, 30, was delivered by Lawrence Superior Court Judge Mary Ames following four days of deliberation. He will be sentenced next month.
“This has been a very difficult matter, to say the least,” said Ames as she prepared to read her verdict.
Ames found Green guilty of assault and battery on a child causing substantial bodily injury, but not guilty of permitting an assault and battery on the child.
Green and his lawyer, Joseph Collins, had waived a jury in the case, which was based in large part on complex medical evidence.
The incident, on Nov. 27, 2012, left the baby with a 60 percent loss of vision and developmental delays.
Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital found that the child, who they believe had either been thrown down or shaken violently, suffered bleeding on the brain and on both retinas, as well as bruising under his armpits and on his spleen, and a laceration to his thigh.
The child, now 3, has spent much of his life since then with a foster mother who is a retired head injury nurse.
She described how the boy is beginning to recognize his limitations compared to other children and how he struggles with that knowledge, as well as other symptoms of a traumatic brain injury.
His vision is so poor, the foster mother testified, that he was unable to see the animals, only nearby trees, during a trip to the zoo. He will begin receiving services this fall from the Perkins School for the Blind.
http://www.salemnews.com/news/local_news/father-guilty-in-shaken-baby-case/article_da0ee491-b354-5ea4-bb3f-70ad18c52d8a.html
Father guilty in shaken baby case
Danvers: Former resident guilty of assault, battery on a child with substantial injury
Posted: Monday, August 24, 2015 9:55 pm
BY JULIE MANGANIS STAFF WRITER
A former Danvers resident is facing up to 15 years in state prison, after a judge on Monday found him guilty of causing life-altering injuries to his then-3-month-old son.
The verdict against Daniel Green, 30, was delivered by Lawrence Superior Court Judge Mary Ames following four days of deliberation. He will be sentenced next month.
“This has been a very difficult matter, to say the least,” said Ames as she prepared to read her verdict.
Ames found Green guilty of assault and battery on a child causing substantial bodily injury, but not guilty of permitting an assault and battery on the child.
Green and his lawyer, Joseph Collins, had waived a jury in the case, which was based in large part on complex medical evidence.
The incident, on Nov. 27, 2012, left the baby with a 60 percent loss of vision and developmental delays.
Doctors at Boston Children’s Hospital found that the child, who they believe had either been thrown down or shaken violently, suffered bleeding on the brain and on both retinas, as well as bruising under his armpits and on his spleen, and a laceration to his thigh.
The child, now 3, has spent much of his life since then with a foster mother who is a retired head injury nurse.
She described how the boy is beginning to recognize his limitations compared to other children and how he struggles with that knowledge, as well as other symptoms of a traumatic brain injury.
His vision is so poor, the foster mother testified, that he was unable to see the animals, only nearby trees, during a trip to the zoo. He will begin receiving services this fall from the Perkins School for the Blind.
Monday, August 17, 2015
How abusive dad got custody in seven minutes (Worcester, Massachusetts)
The ONLY reason such a travesty could have taken place is the utter triumph of Fathers Rights in the family court system. Fathers are coddled and indulged despite histories of domestic violence, severe mental illness, drugs/alcohol abuse, evidence of child abuse...none of it matters in terms of gaining and retaining custody.
We've reported on custodial dad RANDALL LINTS before.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/08/15/seven-minutes-that-sealed-boy-fate/lLqEG1IEo4aDzBbFEZFXfI/story.html
7 minutes that set a child’s course for tragedy
Hearing that gave a Hardwick boy to father who allegedly beat and starved him was terse, incurious, disastrous
By Michael Levenson Globe Staff August 15, 2015
WORCESTER — It took seven minutes of rustling papers and perfunctory questions uttered in rapid-fire monotone, and the deal was done. A Worcester probate judge had transferred custody of a young boy from the grandmother who had raised him almost since birth to the father whom he barely knew. A year later, the father would be charged with nearly killing the boy by beating him and refusing him food and water.
Even though family members now say that the father had a history of violence and mental illness, and though he had only recently acknowledged that he was the father, Judge Lucille A. DiLeo never questioned Randall Lints’s fitness to raise his son.
And no party to the case suggested she should.
“OK, I think we have everything,” DiLeo said in a matter-of-fact voice, after reading aloud the main points of the custody papers, and ensuring that they had been signed by the father, mother, and grandmother standing before her. “Thank you, everybody.”
Legal experts say such quick approval is typical in cases like this one.
There was no dispute over the father’s petition for custody, because the family members had signed it before the brief hearing on June 30, 2014, a recording of which was obtained by the Globe. The judge simply ratified the family consensus. There was no one in court to speak specifically for the child.
The tragic fallout from the custody ruling has raised questions about whether probate courts can do more to protect the children whose lives their decisions most deeply affect. ‘They’re all standing there, they all agree, they all signed off on it, and that’s it.’
“We must reform our probate and family courts so that, in every case, the interests of children outweigh the desires and preferences of adults,” said Gail Garinger, a former juvenile court judge who heads the state Office of the Child Advocate. “Children in our courts need experienced professionals who will listen to them and help identify their genuine needs, skilled advocates for their interests, and decision-makers who will make the welfare of the children before them their highest priority.”
Other legal specialists, even as they acknowledge the horrors allegedly inflicted by Lints, recoil at the notion that judges should intervene in cases in which an entire family is in agreement about who should gain custody.
“The idea that the state gets to tell you whether you have it together enough to bring up your child is really a little bit scary,” said Mary E. O’Connell, a professor of child and family law at Northeastern University School of Law.
Indeed, in a custody case that is not disputed, the judge must presume that the adults have the child’s best interests at heart, said Edward M. Ginsburg, a retired probate court judge who served 25 years in Middlesex County.
“In this case, there is nothing that the judge should have done that she didn’t do: They’re all standing there, they all agree, they all signed off on it, and that’s it,” Ginsburg said. “In that context, it’s an administrative function.”
The 7-year-old boy has been in a coma since July 14, when paramedics carried him from Lints’s home in Hardwick with bruises across his body and burns on his feet.
He weighed just 38 pounds, having lost 12 to 15 pounds in recent weeks. Authorities say Lints had kept his son in his bedroom and starved and dehydrated him to stop him from urinating on the floor.
The case has focused intense scrutiny on the state Department of Children and Families, which had been monitoring the boy since February when it received back-to-back complaints that Lints was neglecting the child.
Officials have acknowledged that a state social worker visited the home just two weeks before the boy fell into a coma and his father called 911.
A year earlier, DiLeo had made what would turn out to be the fateful decision to transfer custody of the boy. In court, she ticked off the nuts and bolts of the deal: The maternal grandmother, who had been the boy’s legal guardian since 2008, would hand custody to Lints, 26.
Reading from the agreement, she confirmed his promise to enroll the boy in counseling and add him to his Medicaid plan. She affirmed the visitation rights of the boy’s mother, Amber Loiselle, who had been estranged from her son for two years.
No one present raised any objections that might have prompted DiLeo to question the arrangement. The judge sealed the deal with a series of questions to each family member.
“Did you sign here? Did you review it with your lawyer before you signed it? Understood it? Signed it freely and voluntarily?” And, finally, “Thank you.”
DiLeo could have appointed an attorney for the child or an independent advocate, called a guardian ad litem, to assess whether placing him with the father was in the boy’s best interests, said Sanford N. Katz, a professor emeritus at Boston College Law School and a specialist in family law.
“The focus of the case has to be on the child, not on the parents or anybody else,” Katz said. “Even though all the parties may agree the father is the one, an independent look at this might say no.”
DiLeo did not respond to several messages.
Still, it would have been highly unusual for her to intervene when there was no dispute over custody, said Robin M. Deutsch, the director of the Center of Excellence for Children, Families and the Law at William James College in Newton.
“If people don’t bring forward a concern, it’s really not up to the court to go on a fishing expedition,” Deutsch said. “It would be very inappropriate to say, ‘Wait a moment. Let’s get an evaluation.’ Instead, you say, ‘How great that they agreed; how wonderful.’ ”
If DiLeo had scrutinized the case, she might have discovered cause for concern.
In 2007, when Lints was first told that he was going to be a father, “He would call me and threaten to cut [the baby] out of my stomach,” Amber Loiselle told the Globe last month.
A year later, a judge in Fitchburg granted Loiselle a restraining order against Lints after he allegedly shoved her to the ground. Lints was not listed on the boy’s birth certificate, and the boy was told that his father was dead, according to relatives.
Lints only became involved in his son’s life in 2013, after he was sued by the state to provide child support and was ordered to take a paternity test, court records show.
Lints’s mother, Tina LaValley, said she warned her son, who has bipolar disorder and borderline schizophrenia, not to seek custody of the boy.
“I says, ‘You don’t want to put yourself in that situation,’ ” LaValley told NECN. “[He said], ‘I don’t want nobody calling me a deadbeat dad. I’m not going to be a deadbeat dad. That is my son. I’m going to raise my son.’ ”
We've reported on custodial dad RANDALL LINTS before.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/08/15/seven-minutes-that-sealed-boy-fate/lLqEG1IEo4aDzBbFEZFXfI/story.html
7 minutes that set a child’s course for tragedy
Hearing that gave a Hardwick boy to father who allegedly beat and starved him was terse, incurious, disastrous
By Michael Levenson Globe Staff August 15, 2015
WORCESTER — It took seven minutes of rustling papers and perfunctory questions uttered in rapid-fire monotone, and the deal was done. A Worcester probate judge had transferred custody of a young boy from the grandmother who had raised him almost since birth to the father whom he barely knew. A year later, the father would be charged with nearly killing the boy by beating him and refusing him food and water.
Even though family members now say that the father had a history of violence and mental illness, and though he had only recently acknowledged that he was the father, Judge Lucille A. DiLeo never questioned Randall Lints’s fitness to raise his son.
And no party to the case suggested she should.
“OK, I think we have everything,” DiLeo said in a matter-of-fact voice, after reading aloud the main points of the custody papers, and ensuring that they had been signed by the father, mother, and grandmother standing before her. “Thank you, everybody.”
Legal experts say such quick approval is typical in cases like this one.
There was no dispute over the father’s petition for custody, because the family members had signed it before the brief hearing on June 30, 2014, a recording of which was obtained by the Globe. The judge simply ratified the family consensus. There was no one in court to speak specifically for the child.
The tragic fallout from the custody ruling has raised questions about whether probate courts can do more to protect the children whose lives their decisions most deeply affect. ‘They’re all standing there, they all agree, they all signed off on it, and that’s it.’
“We must reform our probate and family courts so that, in every case, the interests of children outweigh the desires and preferences of adults,” said Gail Garinger, a former juvenile court judge who heads the state Office of the Child Advocate. “Children in our courts need experienced professionals who will listen to them and help identify their genuine needs, skilled advocates for their interests, and decision-makers who will make the welfare of the children before them their highest priority.”
Other legal specialists, even as they acknowledge the horrors allegedly inflicted by Lints, recoil at the notion that judges should intervene in cases in which an entire family is in agreement about who should gain custody.
“The idea that the state gets to tell you whether you have it together enough to bring up your child is really a little bit scary,” said Mary E. O’Connell, a professor of child and family law at Northeastern University School of Law.
Indeed, in a custody case that is not disputed, the judge must presume that the adults have the child’s best interests at heart, said Edward M. Ginsburg, a retired probate court judge who served 25 years in Middlesex County.
“In this case, there is nothing that the judge should have done that she didn’t do: They’re all standing there, they all agree, they all signed off on it, and that’s it,” Ginsburg said. “In that context, it’s an administrative function.”
The 7-year-old boy has been in a coma since July 14, when paramedics carried him from Lints’s home in Hardwick with bruises across his body and burns on his feet.
He weighed just 38 pounds, having lost 12 to 15 pounds in recent weeks. Authorities say Lints had kept his son in his bedroom and starved and dehydrated him to stop him from urinating on the floor.
The case has focused intense scrutiny on the state Department of Children and Families, which had been monitoring the boy since February when it received back-to-back complaints that Lints was neglecting the child.
Officials have acknowledged that a state social worker visited the home just two weeks before the boy fell into a coma and his father called 911.
A year earlier, DiLeo had made what would turn out to be the fateful decision to transfer custody of the boy. In court, she ticked off the nuts and bolts of the deal: The maternal grandmother, who had been the boy’s legal guardian since 2008, would hand custody to Lints, 26.
Reading from the agreement, she confirmed his promise to enroll the boy in counseling and add him to his Medicaid plan. She affirmed the visitation rights of the boy’s mother, Amber Loiselle, who had been estranged from her son for two years.
No one present raised any objections that might have prompted DiLeo to question the arrangement. The judge sealed the deal with a series of questions to each family member.
“Did you sign here? Did you review it with your lawyer before you signed it? Understood it? Signed it freely and voluntarily?” And, finally, “Thank you.”
DiLeo could have appointed an attorney for the child or an independent advocate, called a guardian ad litem, to assess whether placing him with the father was in the boy’s best interests, said Sanford N. Katz, a professor emeritus at Boston College Law School and a specialist in family law.
“The focus of the case has to be on the child, not on the parents or anybody else,” Katz said. “Even though all the parties may agree the father is the one, an independent look at this might say no.”
DiLeo did not respond to several messages.
Still, it would have been highly unusual for her to intervene when there was no dispute over custody, said Robin M. Deutsch, the director of the Center of Excellence for Children, Families and the Law at William James College in Newton.
“If people don’t bring forward a concern, it’s really not up to the court to go on a fishing expedition,” Deutsch said. “It would be very inappropriate to say, ‘Wait a moment. Let’s get an evaluation.’ Instead, you say, ‘How great that they agreed; how wonderful.’ ”
If DiLeo had scrutinized the case, she might have discovered cause for concern.
In 2007, when Lints was first told that he was going to be a father, “He would call me and threaten to cut [the baby] out of my stomach,” Amber Loiselle told the Globe last month.
A year later, a judge in Fitchburg granted Loiselle a restraining order against Lints after he allegedly shoved her to the ground. Lints was not listed on the boy’s birth certificate, and the boy was told that his father was dead, according to relatives.
Lints only became involved in his son’s life in 2013, after he was sued by the state to provide child support and was ordered to take a paternity test, court records show.
Lints’s mother, Tina LaValley, said she warned her son, who has bipolar disorder and borderline schizophrenia, not to seek custody of the boy.
“I says, ‘You don’t want to put yourself in that situation,’ ” LaValley told NECN. “[He said], ‘I don’t want nobody calling me a deadbeat dad. I’m not going to be a deadbeat dad. That is my son. I’m going to raise my son.’ ”
Friday, August 7, 2015
7-year-old boy severely abused by custodial dad being moved to rehab facility (Hardwick, Massachusetts)
We've posted before on dad RANDALL LINTS. Notice that the fact that Daddy had sole custody, and that DCF knew about his abuse for months, and did nothing to stop it, is gradually disappearing from the main narrative....
So obviously the intent is to frame this as "just a tragedy" and deny that this is an outrageous miscarriage of justice. Still waiting for the name of the judge who authorized Daddy to take possession....
http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/77923ad1820c49e8a8f3a52a9bb03ffd/MA--Child-Abuse-Charges
Officials: Injured boy, 7, allegedly abused by father being moved to rehabilitative facility
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS August 06, 2015 - 3:17 am EDT
BOSTON — State officials say a 7-year-old Massachusetts boy who fell into a coma after allegedly being abused and isolated by his father has been moved to a long-term rehabilitative facility.
A spokesman with the state's Department of Children and Families said Wednesday the Hardwick boy is "medically stable but unresponsive."
She says the agency remains "deeply concerned" about the well-being of the boy.
The DCF took custody of the boy on July 14 after he was found unconscious.
Authorities said the child had been beaten, starved and dehydrated.
The boy's father, 26-year-old Randall Lints, remains jailed on assault and endangerment charges until a dangerousness hearing scheduled for Aug. 19.
Gov. Charlie Baker says the state's investigation is ongoing and a report is expected to be released in September.
So obviously the intent is to frame this as "just a tragedy" and deny that this is an outrageous miscarriage of justice. Still waiting for the name of the judge who authorized Daddy to take possession....
http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/77923ad1820c49e8a8f3a52a9bb03ffd/MA--Child-Abuse-Charges
Officials: Injured boy, 7, allegedly abused by father being moved to rehabilitative facility
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS August 06, 2015 - 3:17 am EDT
BOSTON — State officials say a 7-year-old Massachusetts boy who fell into a coma after allegedly being abused and isolated by his father has been moved to a long-term rehabilitative facility.
A spokesman with the state's Department of Children and Families said Wednesday the Hardwick boy is "medically stable but unresponsive."
She says the agency remains "deeply concerned" about the well-being of the boy.
The DCF took custody of the boy on July 14 after he was found unconscious.
Authorities said the child had been beaten, starved and dehydrated.
The boy's father, 26-year-old Randall Lints, remains jailed on assault and endangerment charges until a dangerousness hearing scheduled for Aug. 19.
Gov. Charlie Baker says the state's investigation is ongoing and a report is expected to be released in September.
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
DCF "actively" engaged with custodial dad since February, but that didn't stop him from putting 7-year-old son into coma (Hardwick, Massachusetts)
Where do you even start with this case?
With freaking DCF, that managed to coddle this abuser for months on end while this little boy was starved and beaten?
How about with the family courts, who gave this batterer SOLE CUSTODY--even though the mother was filing for an order of protection just nine days after the baby was born?
We need to see names, people. Social workers, judges. All the fathers-rights people who have been planted in the system. And no more crap about how poor daddies are discriminated against in Massachusetts.
Dad is identified as RANDALL LINTS.
http://www.wbur.org/2015/07/24/dcf-involved-with-harwick-boy
Since February, DCF Had Been ‘Actively Engaged’ With Hardwick Boy Now In A Coma
July 24, 2015 Updated July 24, 2015, 9:15 am
By David Boeri Updated July 24, 2015, 9:15 am
Editor’s Note: Some details in this story are disturbing.
BOSTON — The state’s child welfare agency is facing questions about whether it did enough to protect a 7-year-old boy from the Worcester County town of Hardwick who’s now hospitalized in a coma.
The Department of Children and Families acknowledges that it had been involved with the boy’s family since February.
The boy’s father, Randall Lints, is charged with child abuse and is being held without bail. He’s scheduled to be back in court next week.
WBUR spoke with the boy’s mother, Amber Loiselle, who’s waiting to find out whether her son Jack survives. Loiselle says Jack has been in a coma since July 14, when Lints called 911 to report finding him unresponsive.
“He has most beautiful soft blonde hair. He was squeezing my hand. I just know that he’s going to come back,” an emotional Loiselle said Thursday.
After Lints called 911, police and medical personnel found signs of starvation, dehydration, bruises and burns. Lints, who was granted sole custody of the child last year, was arrested and charged on Wednesday with assault and battery and reckless endangerment.
On Wednesday, Loiselle had accused DCF of clear negligence. On Thursday, she was taking pains not to talk about DCF or the boy’s father, since the matter is also in family court.
When asked if the boy had been in the care of DCF, Loiselle said: “I am not at liberty to discuss any of that information because it is a private family matter, so my lawyer advised me not to speak anything about it.”
Meanwhile, the DCF, which declined to comment on the case 10 days after the 911 call, acknowledged Thursday that indeed DCF had been “actively engaged” with both the boy and his father since February, and they had seen them three times this month, while the boy continued to lose some 25 percent of his weight, according to a hospital pediatrician.
When asked if she felt the DCF didn’t do their job, Loiselle said, “That’s something I can’t talk about right now.” #She added: “My personal feelings are that I’m upset that this happened to my son and that … something could have been done.”
According to sources familiar with the case, the report that triggered DCF’s involvement came from Jack’s elementary school. Under the law, schools are mandated to report reasonable suspicion that a child is suffering from abuse or neglect. There were also indications at school that the boy was stealing food.
A police report estimated his weight had dropped from 50 pounds to 38 and that his father withheld food and drink. The report also indicated the boy suffered from bleach burns, the result of the father’s forcing his son to wash the floors, because, according to one source, the boy was apparently urinating on himself.
Yet DCF says that one of its social workers saw the child on June 29.
Until he was arrested, Lints lived with his girlfriend, her three young children and Jack. He separated from Loiselle before their son was born and later contested paternity.
His criminal record, according to a law enforcement source, indicates that Jack’s mother sought a restraining order against Lints nine days after Jack was born. Loiselle confirmed there was a restraining order in place, saying it was “for violence, for threatening to hurt me.”
A dangerousness hearing scheduled for Friday was rescheduled until next week because Lints’ first attorney is no longer representing him.
The reason is sobering. John Madaio is not on the list of attorneys qualified to represent defendants in murder cases. Lints’ new attorney is.
DCF stated Thursday night that it “immediately took custody of the child” on July 14. That, of course, was after the child fell into a coma.
With freaking DCF, that managed to coddle this abuser for months on end while this little boy was starved and beaten?
How about with the family courts, who gave this batterer SOLE CUSTODY--even though the mother was filing for an order of protection just nine days after the baby was born?
We need to see names, people. Social workers, judges. All the fathers-rights people who have been planted in the system. And no more crap about how poor daddies are discriminated against in Massachusetts.
Dad is identified as RANDALL LINTS.
http://www.wbur.org/2015/07/24/dcf-involved-with-harwick-boy
Since February, DCF Had Been ‘Actively Engaged’ With Hardwick Boy Now In A Coma
July 24, 2015 Updated July 24, 2015, 9:15 am
By David Boeri Updated July 24, 2015, 9:15 am
Editor’s Note: Some details in this story are disturbing.
BOSTON — The state’s child welfare agency is facing questions about whether it did enough to protect a 7-year-old boy from the Worcester County town of Hardwick who’s now hospitalized in a coma.
The Department of Children and Families acknowledges that it had been involved with the boy’s family since February.
The boy’s father, Randall Lints, is charged with child abuse and is being held without bail. He’s scheduled to be back in court next week.
WBUR spoke with the boy’s mother, Amber Loiselle, who’s waiting to find out whether her son Jack survives. Loiselle says Jack has been in a coma since July 14, when Lints called 911 to report finding him unresponsive.
“He has most beautiful soft blonde hair. He was squeezing my hand. I just know that he’s going to come back,” an emotional Loiselle said Thursday.
After Lints called 911, police and medical personnel found signs of starvation, dehydration, bruises and burns. Lints, who was granted sole custody of the child last year, was arrested and charged on Wednesday with assault and battery and reckless endangerment.
On Wednesday, Loiselle had accused DCF of clear negligence. On Thursday, she was taking pains not to talk about DCF or the boy’s father, since the matter is also in family court.
When asked if the boy had been in the care of DCF, Loiselle said: “I am not at liberty to discuss any of that information because it is a private family matter, so my lawyer advised me not to speak anything about it.”
Meanwhile, the DCF, which declined to comment on the case 10 days after the 911 call, acknowledged Thursday that indeed DCF had been “actively engaged” with both the boy and his father since February, and they had seen them three times this month, while the boy continued to lose some 25 percent of his weight, according to a hospital pediatrician.
When asked if she felt the DCF didn’t do their job, Loiselle said, “That’s something I can’t talk about right now.” #She added: “My personal feelings are that I’m upset that this happened to my son and that … something could have been done.”
According to sources familiar with the case, the report that triggered DCF’s involvement came from Jack’s elementary school. Under the law, schools are mandated to report reasonable suspicion that a child is suffering from abuse or neglect. There were also indications at school that the boy was stealing food.
A police report estimated his weight had dropped from 50 pounds to 38 and that his father withheld food and drink. The report also indicated the boy suffered from bleach burns, the result of the father’s forcing his son to wash the floors, because, according to one source, the boy was apparently urinating on himself.
Yet DCF says that one of its social workers saw the child on June 29.
Until he was arrested, Lints lived with his girlfriend, her three young children and Jack. He separated from Loiselle before their son was born and later contested paternity.
His criminal record, according to a law enforcement source, indicates that Jack’s mother sought a restraining order against Lints nine days after Jack was born. Loiselle confirmed there was a restraining order in place, saying it was “for violence, for threatening to hurt me.”
A dangerousness hearing scheduled for Friday was rescheduled until next week because Lints’ first attorney is no longer representing him.
The reason is sobering. John Madaio is not on the list of attorneys qualified to represent defendants in murder cases. Lints’ new attorney is.
DCF stated Thursday night that it “immediately took custody of the child” on July 14. That, of course, was after the child fell into a coma.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Custodial dad charged with abuse, starvation of 7-year-old son; boy in coma (Hardwick, Massachusetts)
7-Year-Old Boy Abused, Starved, Father Arrested
So yes, RANDALL LINTS IS a custodial father. So who gave this POS custody and allowed this situation to fester like this, apparently for months? I want to start seeing judge's names, people.
http://www.necn.com/news/new-england/Police-7-Year-Old-Boy-Abused-Starved-318185691.html
Police said he was brought to the hospital unconscious, weighing only 38 pounds
By Kathryn Sotnik
A Massachusetts man is facing multiple charges after his 7-year-old son was brought to the hospital unconscious suffering from starvation and dehydration last week.
(Published Wednesday, July 22, 2015) Updated at 10:38 AM EDT on Thursday, Jul 23, 2015
A 7-year-old Massachusetts boy was abused so badly by his father that he was in a coma and unresponsive when he was admitted to a local hospital, suffering from "starving and dehydration" at just 38.5 pounds, according to police and court documents.
The boy's father, 26-year-old Randall Lints, faces a slew of child abuse charges.
In addition to the malnutrition, police said the child, abused on the second-floor of a Hardwick home, had injuries to his skin as a result of "bleach exposure."
Massachusetts State Police said they discovered the boy after responding to a 911 call on July 14. Lints allegedly told police that he went to check on his son and found him unresponsive, and that he had fallen out of bed days earlier.
First responders said they found bruises to the child's "forehead and jaw," but doctors said the injuries weren't consistent with falling out of bed. The boy also had injuries to his feet, "likely from a manufactured object," and appeared to have lost "12-15 pounds in only a few months," according to the report.
Lints was arrested about a week after his son was admitted to the hospital.
Amber Loiselle identified the victim as her son, Jack. She said she's been visiting him on her custody days in the hospital.
"He's my first born, and he's a great older brother" she said. "I just want him to open his eyes, because they're the most beautiful color of blue."
Isabella Johnson, 10, rides the bus with the child.
"He told me he scrubs the floor sometimes," Johnson said. "He says for a chore, his parents make him clean the floors."
Johnson also said he would be cold and hungry at school.
"Sometimes he comes to school, like in the winter time, he was really cold," she said. "He'd go to school on the bus and be like, 'I'm hungry,' so he'd open his lunch and eat it, and then he'd have nothing to eat at lunch."
Isabella's mom, Dawn Johnson, said through tears that she saw the little boy just recently.
"I had a yard sale a couple weeks ago and I was giving toys to him and stuff, because he doesn't have — I just let him have stuff," said Dawn Johnson.
Wednesday, a woman neighbors identified as Lints' girlfriend cried near the house. Neighbors didn't report seeing anything amiss, but one downstairs neighbor said she heard yelling a few months ago.
"I heard him yelling at his son, saying, 'Why did you do it, why did you do it?' and the child crying," she said.
Amber Loiselle said Jack is slowly getting better.
"Justice will prevail for my son, and he is going to come out of this, because he is just the most amazing little boy," she said.
The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families says the boy is in its custody. He is still recovering at a local hospital. A Facebook page set up for him says he is progressing, and that he was able to wiggle his arms and shoulders and cough on his own.
Published at 3:54 PM EDT on Jul 22, 2015
So yes, RANDALL LINTS IS a custodial father. So who gave this POS custody and allowed this situation to fester like this, apparently for months? I want to start seeing judge's names, people.
http://www.necn.com/news/new-england/Police-7-Year-Old-Boy-Abused-Starved-318185691.html
Police said he was brought to the hospital unconscious, weighing only 38 pounds
By Kathryn Sotnik
A Massachusetts man is facing multiple charges after his 7-year-old son was brought to the hospital unconscious suffering from starvation and dehydration last week.
(Published Wednesday, July 22, 2015) Updated at 10:38 AM EDT on Thursday, Jul 23, 2015
A 7-year-old Massachusetts boy was abused so badly by his father that he was in a coma and unresponsive when he was admitted to a local hospital, suffering from "starving and dehydration" at just 38.5 pounds, according to police and court documents.
The boy's father, 26-year-old Randall Lints, faces a slew of child abuse charges.
In addition to the malnutrition, police said the child, abused on the second-floor of a Hardwick home, had injuries to his skin as a result of "bleach exposure."
Massachusetts State Police said they discovered the boy after responding to a 911 call on July 14. Lints allegedly told police that he went to check on his son and found him unresponsive, and that he had fallen out of bed days earlier.
First responders said they found bruises to the child's "forehead and jaw," but doctors said the injuries weren't consistent with falling out of bed. The boy also had injuries to his feet, "likely from a manufactured object," and appeared to have lost "12-15 pounds in only a few months," according to the report.
Lints was arrested about a week after his son was admitted to the hospital.
Amber Loiselle identified the victim as her son, Jack. She said she's been visiting him on her custody days in the hospital.
"He's my first born, and he's a great older brother" she said. "I just want him to open his eyes, because they're the most beautiful color of blue."
Isabella Johnson, 10, rides the bus with the child.
"He told me he scrubs the floor sometimes," Johnson said. "He says for a chore, his parents make him clean the floors."
Johnson also said he would be cold and hungry at school.
"Sometimes he comes to school, like in the winter time, he was really cold," she said. "He'd go to school on the bus and be like, 'I'm hungry,' so he'd open his lunch and eat it, and then he'd have nothing to eat at lunch."
Isabella's mom, Dawn Johnson, said through tears that she saw the little boy just recently.
"I had a yard sale a couple weeks ago and I was giving toys to him and stuff, because he doesn't have — I just let him have stuff," said Dawn Johnson.
Wednesday, a woman neighbors identified as Lints' girlfriend cried near the house. Neighbors didn't report seeing anything amiss, but one downstairs neighbor said she heard yelling a few months ago.
"I heard him yelling at his son, saying, 'Why did you do it, why did you do it?' and the child crying," she said.
Amber Loiselle said Jack is slowly getting better.
"Justice will prevail for my son, and he is going to come out of this, because he is just the most amazing little boy," she said.
The Massachusetts Department of Children and Families says the boy is in its custody. He is still recovering at a local hospital. A Facebook page set up for him says he is progressing, and that he was able to wiggle his arms and shoulders and cough on his own.
Published at 3:54 PM EDT on Jul 22, 2015
Dad charged with abusing 7-year-old son who fell into coma; boy had signs of starvation, dehydration, bruising--Is this a custodial dad? (Hardwick, Massachusetts)
Is RANDALL E. LINTS a custodial father? Sure sounds like it, though this article is pretty oblique about his status.
Even in a case of joint custody, this kind of abuse could not have gone on this long without the mother knowing about it. If she had known about it, she would either have been charged with failure to protect, at minimum, or would have contacted the authorities herself.
But in fact, there is no reference to a mother either in the home or elsewhere. We're merely told--at the very end--that a mother is "not named" in the report and that Daddy Dearest is unmarried.
In other words, he was almost assuredly custodial.
So who gave this torture freak custody of a little boy? And what happened to this little boy's mom? Did dad dish out similar treatment towards her?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/07/22/hardwick-father-charged-after-boy-found-abused-and-starved/NtrcgmJ28GzRZEJpymv4XM/story.html
Father charged in abuse of son, 7, who fell into coma
Boy showed signs of starvation
Rick Cinclair/Worcester Telegram & Gazette via AP
Randall E. Lints, 26, entered no plea at his arraignment Wednesday in East Brookfield District Court.
By Travis Andersen
Globe Staff July 22, 2015
A Hardwick man is being held without bail in a disturbing case in which he allegedly assaulted his 7-year-old son, who fell into a coma and showed signs of starvation, dehydration, and bruising, injuries that were exacerbated when he was forced to scrub floors, court records show.
Randall E. Lints, 26, entered no plea at his arraignment Wednesday in East Brookfield District Court to charges of assault and battery on a child with substantial injury, reckless endangerment of a child, and two counts of permitting injury to a child, said a spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.
Lints was ordered held pending a dangerousness hearing on Friday. He was arrested on Tuesday.
His lawyer, John F. Madaio, declined to comment on the charges but said Lints is “very concerned for his son, and he’s very distressed about the whole situation.”
The state Department of Children and Families said in a brief statement that the agency “received a report and is collaborating with law enforcement on its investigation.” The boy is currently in DCF custody.
A DCF spokeswoman declined to say whether the boy’s family had a prior history with the child protection agency, citing respect for the youth’s privacy.
According to a State Police report, a Hardwick officer went to Lints’ home on July 14, after a caller said a child there was breathing but unresponsive. The officer saw bruising on the boy’s head and jaw, and Lints said the child fell out of bed two days earlier, the report said.
The boy was taken to Baystate Mary Lane Hospital in Ware with “life-threatening injuries,” according to the report. He was transferred to the Baystate Health medical campus in Springfield, where Dr. Stephen C. Boos examined him several times.
According to authorities, Boos noted that the boy had multiple bruises on his body that were inconsistent with a fall, and the child had lost approximately 12 to 15 pounds in recent months, dropping to just 38½ pounds.
Boos wrote in one assessment that “reports of being ‘in his room’ for days, against a background of behavioral complaints, combined with the physical injuries, apparent starvation, and dehydration create grave concerns for inflicted injury,” the State Police report said.
The report, filed after Lints’s arrest on Tuesday, said the boy is still in a coma. He remains hospitalized in Springfield, and a Baystate Health spokesman said he had no information on the child on Wednesday.
Investigators have found that Lints, who has a grim reaper tattoo on his chest, rarely lets his son out of view or allows him to be alone with others, and that he has a history of limiting the boy’s food and drink intake, even though a therapist addressed the issue in May, the report said. #Lints’ strict discipline and “forcing [his son] to continuously wash the floors contributed to [his] injuries,” State Police wrote.
The report also said injuries to the child’s knees and hands are the result of bleach exposure and are healing.
In addition, a nurse spotted scarring and blistering on his feet that appeared to be the result of a burn, the report said.
Madaio, his lawyer, said Wednesday that “I think some information will come out [during Friday’s hearing] that is interesting, at least as far as the situation that he finds himself in. . . . That’s all I have to say right now.”
The boy’s mother is not named in the State Police report, and court records indicate that Lints is unmarried.
Even in a case of joint custody, this kind of abuse could not have gone on this long without the mother knowing about it. If she had known about it, she would either have been charged with failure to protect, at minimum, or would have contacted the authorities herself.
But in fact, there is no reference to a mother either in the home or elsewhere. We're merely told--at the very end--that a mother is "not named" in the report and that Daddy Dearest is unmarried.
In other words, he was almost assuredly custodial.
So who gave this torture freak custody of a little boy? And what happened to this little boy's mom? Did dad dish out similar treatment towards her?
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/07/22/hardwick-father-charged-after-boy-found-abused-and-starved/NtrcgmJ28GzRZEJpymv4XM/story.html
Father charged in abuse of son, 7, who fell into coma
Boy showed signs of starvation
Rick Cinclair/Worcester Telegram & Gazette via AP
Randall E. Lints, 26, entered no plea at his arraignment Wednesday in East Brookfield District Court.
By Travis Andersen
Globe Staff July 22, 2015
A Hardwick man is being held without bail in a disturbing case in which he allegedly assaulted his 7-year-old son, who fell into a coma and showed signs of starvation, dehydration, and bruising, injuries that were exacerbated when he was forced to scrub floors, court records show.
Randall E. Lints, 26, entered no plea at his arraignment Wednesday in East Brookfield District Court to charges of assault and battery on a child with substantial injury, reckless endangerment of a child, and two counts of permitting injury to a child, said a spokesman for Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr.
Lints was ordered held pending a dangerousness hearing on Friday. He was arrested on Tuesday.
His lawyer, John F. Madaio, declined to comment on the charges but said Lints is “very concerned for his son, and he’s very distressed about the whole situation.”
The state Department of Children and Families said in a brief statement that the agency “received a report and is collaborating with law enforcement on its investigation.” The boy is currently in DCF custody.
A DCF spokeswoman declined to say whether the boy’s family had a prior history with the child protection agency, citing respect for the youth’s privacy.
According to a State Police report, a Hardwick officer went to Lints’ home on July 14, after a caller said a child there was breathing but unresponsive. The officer saw bruising on the boy’s head and jaw, and Lints said the child fell out of bed two days earlier, the report said.
The boy was taken to Baystate Mary Lane Hospital in Ware with “life-threatening injuries,” according to the report. He was transferred to the Baystate Health medical campus in Springfield, where Dr. Stephen C. Boos examined him several times.
According to authorities, Boos noted that the boy had multiple bruises on his body that were inconsistent with a fall, and the child had lost approximately 12 to 15 pounds in recent months, dropping to just 38½ pounds.
Boos wrote in one assessment that “reports of being ‘in his room’ for days, against a background of behavioral complaints, combined with the physical injuries, apparent starvation, and dehydration create grave concerns for inflicted injury,” the State Police report said.
The report, filed after Lints’s arrest on Tuesday, said the boy is still in a coma. He remains hospitalized in Springfield, and a Baystate Health spokesman said he had no information on the child on Wednesday.
Investigators have found that Lints, who has a grim reaper tattoo on his chest, rarely lets his son out of view or allows him to be alone with others, and that he has a history of limiting the boy’s food and drink intake, even though a therapist addressed the issue in May, the report said. #Lints’ strict discipline and “forcing [his son] to continuously wash the floors contributed to [his] injuries,” State Police wrote.
The report also said injuries to the child’s knees and hands are the result of bleach exposure and are healing.
In addition, a nurse spotted scarring and blistering on his feet that appeared to be the result of a burn, the report said.
Madaio, his lawyer, said Wednesday that “I think some information will come out [during Friday’s hearing] that is interesting, at least as far as the situation that he finds himself in. . . . That’s all I have to say right now.”
The boy’s mother is not named in the State Police report, and court records indicate that Lints is unmarried.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Dad pleads guilty to involuntary manslaughter of 2-month-old son; claims baby's death was an "accident" from his PTSD (Lowell, Massachusetts)
Mom is right. Dad CHRISTOPHER BERRY's excuses are bull. This was no "accident" on his part.
I know lots of mothers with PTSD from years of ongoing abuse and trauma, and they don't kill the kids, "accidentally" or otherwise. In fact, they're still trying to do their best to protect them.
http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/27632833/lowell-father-to-change-plea-in-shaken-baby-death
Lowell father pleads guilty in son's shaken-baby death
Posted: Dec 15, 2014 3:55 PM EST Updated: Dec 15, 2014 5:11 PM EST
LOWELL, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) -- An Army veteran from Lowell faced a judge Monday entering a guilty plea in the May, 2013 shaking death of his 2-month-old son.
"I am here today because I accidentally killed my son, William," Christopher Berry said as he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter on Monday.
He originally pleaded not guilty to second degree murder, but changed his plea once the charge was reduced. Prosecutors say Berry shook his son William to death after getting frustrated with the boy's crying.
"He was a beautiful baby. I saw him come into this world and I got to see him leave this world," said Lisa Cupan, William Berry's maternal grandmother.
Lisa Cupan and her daughter Sarah Cupan read victim impact statements in court Monday.
"No one should have to go through that. Especially my mother. She shouldn't have had to gone through that. And my sister. They're broken. That's a baby," Sarah Cupan said.
Berry served with the Army National Guard from 2008 to 201, and did one tour of duty in Afghanistan.His unit was attacked by a suicide bomber in 2011, and he's been treated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder since returning home.
Lisa and Sarah Cupan say they just don't believe William's death was an accident.
"People have PTSD, and they don't kill babies," Lisa said.
"That's bull. It wasn't an accident," Sarah Cupan said. "Did you hear him? He was said it was an accident. No."
He was sentenced to 12 to 16 years in prison, a sentence William's grandmother says isn't long enough
"Change the law," Lisa said. "Take a life, get life."
I know lots of mothers with PTSD from years of ongoing abuse and trauma, and they don't kill the kids, "accidentally" or otherwise. In fact, they're still trying to do their best to protect them.
http://www.myfoxboston.com/story/27632833/lowell-father-to-change-plea-in-shaken-baby-death
Lowell father pleads guilty in son's shaken-baby death
Posted: Dec 15, 2014 3:55 PM EST Updated: Dec 15, 2014 5:11 PM EST
LOWELL, Mass. (MyFoxBoston.com) -- An Army veteran from Lowell faced a judge Monday entering a guilty plea in the May, 2013 shaking death of his 2-month-old son.
"I am here today because I accidentally killed my son, William," Christopher Berry said as he pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter on Monday.
He originally pleaded not guilty to second degree murder, but changed his plea once the charge was reduced. Prosecutors say Berry shook his son William to death after getting frustrated with the boy's crying.
"He was a beautiful baby. I saw him come into this world and I got to see him leave this world," said Lisa Cupan, William Berry's maternal grandmother.
Lisa Cupan and her daughter Sarah Cupan read victim impact statements in court Monday.
"No one should have to go through that. Especially my mother. She shouldn't have had to gone through that. And my sister. They're broken. That's a baby," Sarah Cupan said.
Berry served with the Army National Guard from 2008 to 201, and did one tour of duty in Afghanistan.His unit was attacked by a suicide bomber in 2011, and he's been treated for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder since returning home.
Lisa and Sarah Cupan say they just don't believe William's death was an accident.
"People have PTSD, and they don't kill babies," Lisa said.
"That's bull. It wasn't an accident," Sarah Cupan said. "Did you hear him? He was said it was an accident. No."
He was sentenced to 12 to 16 years in prison, a sentence William's grandmother says isn't long enough
"Change the law," Lisa said. "Take a life, get life."
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
PTSD defense for dad charged with killing 2-month-old son for crying (Lowell, Massachusetts)
Dad is identified as CHRISTOPHER BERRY.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/12/lowell_father_to_change_plea_in_shaken_baby_death
Lowell father to change plea in shaken-baby death
Monday, December 15, 2014
By: Associated Press
LOWELL — An Army veteran from Lowell is scheduled to appear in court for a change of plea hearing in the shaking death of his 2-month-old son. Christopher Berry is scheduled to appear in court Monday in connection with the May 2013 death of his son, William Berry.
Prosecutors say the 24-year-old Berry shook his son because he was frustrated with the child's crying. The boy died several days after he was taken to the hospital. He had previously pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
The Sun of Lowell reports that Berry's lawyer says in court documents that his client was severely affected by his military deployment to Afghanistan.
Attorney Elliot Savitz said that Berry exhibited a number of bizarre behaviors when he returned home that he blamed on post-traumatic stress disorder.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/12/lowell_father_to_change_plea_in_shaken_baby_death
Lowell father to change plea in shaken-baby death
Monday, December 15, 2014
By: Associated Press
LOWELL — An Army veteran from Lowell is scheduled to appear in court for a change of plea hearing in the shaking death of his 2-month-old son. Christopher Berry is scheduled to appear in court Monday in connection with the May 2013 death of his son, William Berry.
Prosecutors say the 24-year-old Berry shook his son because he was frustrated with the child's crying. The boy died several days after he was taken to the hospital. He had previously pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
The Sun of Lowell reports that Berry's lawyer says in court documents that his client was severely affected by his military deployment to Afghanistan.
Attorney Elliot Savitz said that Berry exhibited a number of bizarre behaviors when he returned home that he blamed on post-traumatic stress disorder.
Saturday, November 1, 2014
Court gives custody to dad who abused ex-wife and alienated the kids against her (Massachusetts)
Still think poor little daddies are discriminated against?
The ignorance here is breathtaking. This has NOTHING to do with what is "best for the children" and everything to do with rewarding and reinforcing the abusive control exercised by an UNNAMED DAD who has battered the mother in the past.
When the father's rights people accuse mothers of "alienation," it's treated as a capital crime and as child abuse. When fathers do it, it gets a nod and dismissed--just as we see here. Even though the alienation is part of a larger pattern of abuse and control.
As for this idiotic "guardian" who found the father "supportive" of the mother's relationship with the children? That never happens. Pure lip service if even that. Batterers undermine the mother's authority and well being by physical abuse alone, which by definition, is also mental abuse. Batterers are also expert manipulators, and it is sickening to see the authorities sell out to them as we see here.
The fact that the father is also a police officer is also very troubling, and suggests a lot of backscratching and collusion.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/31/appeals-court-rules-that-father-who-physically-abused-former-wife-should-get-custody-children/NlQtLdBvV4sThqKTTRCTmK/story.html#skip-target1
Court rules in favor of father who abused ex-wife in custody case
By John R. Ellement
Globe Staff
October 31, 2014
A police officer who abused his former wife during their marriage should be given custody of the couple’s two children because they have become so estranged from her that one might attack her, while the other is at risk of suicide, the Massachusetts Appeals court ruled Friday.
The court said the case was not about punishing past bad deeds, but about doing what was best for the children.
In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel of the court supported the decision by Probate and Family Court Judge John D. Casey, who rejected testimony from the mother’s expert that the father had “brainwashed’’ the children into saying he was the only parent they could live with.
Writing for the court, Appeals Judge Ariane D. Vuono said a searching examination of the troubled family by a guardian ad litem concluded that the father was the only safe haven for the children.
The conclusion by the guardian — who interviewed all four family members, as well as therapists and teachers — was properly given more weight by Casey than the mother’s expert, who only interviewed the mother and then listened to trial testimony, Vuono wrote.
“Cases concerning the custody of children are often difficult and emotionally charged, and may be rendered even more complex when domestic violence is involved,’’ Vuono wrote. “The judge properly recognized that the present case was not about punishing a party for past bad behavior, but was about deciding what was best for the children going forward.’’
The court identified the parties only by the fictitious initials K.A. and T.R.
The court said the couple’s turbulent marriage, which began in 1997, was marred by violence between the two, especially when they argued about what became a chronic issue for them, their struggling finances. The father filed for divorce in April 2010.
When the children were young, the mother was the primary caretaker because the husband worked the overnight shift at a police department while also working paid details. The mother worked at a school cafeteria, the court said.
When the couple argued, the father would leave the house for a few days or a week at a time, having no contact with the children, both of whom are now teenagers, according to the court.
But the relationship between the mother and the children changed dramatically, and the children became fearful of her to the point where they would wake up their father and seek his intervention, the court said.
During the divorce proceedings, the mother’s expert testified that the behaviorial change was a “red flag’’ signaling that the father had “brainwashed’’ the children into turning on their mother. But Casey, citing the guardian, found the father had repeatedly been supportive of the mother with the children.
After a trial, Casey ruled for the father, citing the guardian’s conclusion that the one of the children might assault her mother and the second was in such an emotionally vulnerable state that he might commit suicide if ordered to live with their mother.
The Appeals Court concluded that Casey’s rulings “reflect consideration of relevant circumstances ... and the potential risks to the children should the father not have primary physical custody.’’
The court said in its ruling that the mother will, all the same, have substantial parenting time.
The ignorance here is breathtaking. This has NOTHING to do with what is "best for the children" and everything to do with rewarding and reinforcing the abusive control exercised by an UNNAMED DAD who has battered the mother in the past.
When the father's rights people accuse mothers of "alienation," it's treated as a capital crime and as child abuse. When fathers do it, it gets a nod and dismissed--just as we see here. Even though the alienation is part of a larger pattern of abuse and control.
As for this idiotic "guardian" who found the father "supportive" of the mother's relationship with the children? That never happens. Pure lip service if even that. Batterers undermine the mother's authority and well being by physical abuse alone, which by definition, is also mental abuse. Batterers are also expert manipulators, and it is sickening to see the authorities sell out to them as we see here.
The fact that the father is also a police officer is also very troubling, and suggests a lot of backscratching and collusion.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/31/appeals-court-rules-that-father-who-physically-abused-former-wife-should-get-custody-children/NlQtLdBvV4sThqKTTRCTmK/story.html#skip-target1
Court rules in favor of father who abused ex-wife in custody case
By John R. Ellement
Globe Staff
October 31, 2014
A police officer who abused his former wife during their marriage should be given custody of the couple’s two children because they have become so estranged from her that one might attack her, while the other is at risk of suicide, the Massachusetts Appeals court ruled Friday.
The court said the case was not about punishing past bad deeds, but about doing what was best for the children.
In a unanimous ruling, a three-judge panel of the court supported the decision by Probate and Family Court Judge John D. Casey, who rejected testimony from the mother’s expert that the father had “brainwashed’’ the children into saying he was the only parent they could live with.
Writing for the court, Appeals Judge Ariane D. Vuono said a searching examination of the troubled family by a guardian ad litem concluded that the father was the only safe haven for the children.
The conclusion by the guardian — who interviewed all four family members, as well as therapists and teachers — was properly given more weight by Casey than the mother’s expert, who only interviewed the mother and then listened to trial testimony, Vuono wrote.
“Cases concerning the custody of children are often difficult and emotionally charged, and may be rendered even more complex when domestic violence is involved,’’ Vuono wrote. “The judge properly recognized that the present case was not about punishing a party for past bad behavior, but was about deciding what was best for the children going forward.’’
The court identified the parties only by the fictitious initials K.A. and T.R.
The court said the couple’s turbulent marriage, which began in 1997, was marred by violence between the two, especially when they argued about what became a chronic issue for them, their struggling finances. The father filed for divorce in April 2010.
When the children were young, the mother was the primary caretaker because the husband worked the overnight shift at a police department while also working paid details. The mother worked at a school cafeteria, the court said.
When the couple argued, the father would leave the house for a few days or a week at a time, having no contact with the children, both of whom are now teenagers, according to the court.
But the relationship between the mother and the children changed dramatically, and the children became fearful of her to the point where they would wake up their father and seek his intervention, the court said.
During the divorce proceedings, the mother’s expert testified that the behaviorial change was a “red flag’’ signaling that the father had “brainwashed’’ the children into turning on their mother. But Casey, citing the guardian, found the father had repeatedly been supportive of the mother with the children.
After a trial, Casey ruled for the father, citing the guardian’s conclusion that the one of the children might assault her mother and the second was in such an emotionally vulnerable state that he might commit suicide if ordered to live with their mother.
The Appeals Court concluded that Casey’s rulings “reflect consideration of relevant circumstances ... and the potential risks to the children should the father not have primary physical custody.’’
The court said in its ruling that the mother will, all the same, have substantial parenting time.
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Investigation concludes that dad with "longtime custody" killed 6-year-old son in murder-suicide (Mattapan, Massachusetts)
The killer dad is identified as PATRICK MARCELIN.
Once again, we see our Dastardly axiom at work here, that the father's custodial status will be erased by the time of trial (or in this case, final investigation results). Yup, Daddy had "longtime custody." See earlier post here.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/14/authorities-conclude-mattapan-year-old-was-killed-his-father-who-then-took-his-own-life/nvwb6V45c8uTFFiZn0vPnL/story.html
Mattapan deaths are ruled murder, suicide
Father killed 6-year-old
By John R. Ellement | Globe Staff October 14, 2014
Patrick Marcelin killed himself in his friend's apartment in Mattapan.
Six-year-old Destin Marcelin was smothered to death on Sept. 4 in Mattapan by his father, who committed suicide two days later, law enforcement officials said Tuesday, announcing that they were closing their investigation into the deaths.
Patrick Marcelin, 49, killed both his son and then himself, according to Boston police and Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley. The elder Marcelin acted alone, authorities said.
“The facts and evidence tell us what happened, but we may never know why,” Conley said in a statement.
“The tragedy here is only compounded by the fact that it offers no motive and no explanation. Our hearts and prayers are with Destin’s loved ones as they mourn his loss at such a young and innocent age.”
According to authorities, the state medical examiner’s office concluded that the child died on Sept. 4 from “homicidal asphyxia” when his father smothered him by putting pressure on his neck or his chest or “some combination of the two.’’
“The death of a child is always troubling,” Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans said in a statement. “We express our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of young Destin.”
On the morning of his first day of school, Destin was found “unresponsive” in bed in the Devon Street home of Marcelin relatives, authorities said.
His father left the home at about 7:20 a.m., telling relatives his son was sleeping. But when a relative checked on him at about 9:30 a.m., the child was cold to the touch, leading residents to call 911 for help.
Destin was pronounced dead at the scene.
His father kept sporadic contact with relatives over the next two days, during which he vowed to hurt himself.
When police located him on Sept. 6, he slashed his wrists with a kitchen knife and stabbed himself in the chest, despite efforts by officers and others to stop him.
Authorities said that their conclusion that Patrick Marcelin murdered his son was based on interviews with relatives and video footage, and that “Patrick Marcelin’s own statements and behavior all implicate him as his son’s killer.’’
Authorities said they briefed Destin’s mother on their findings and notified the state Department of Children and Families, although there was “no evidence of abusive or criminal conduct by any other person.’’
Once again, we see our Dastardly axiom at work here, that the father's custodial status will be erased by the time of trial (or in this case, final investigation results). Yup, Daddy had "longtime custody." See earlier post here.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/10/14/authorities-conclude-mattapan-year-old-was-killed-his-father-who-then-took-his-own-life/nvwb6V45c8uTFFiZn0vPnL/story.html
Mattapan deaths are ruled murder, suicide
Father killed 6-year-old
By John R. Ellement | Globe Staff October 14, 2014
Patrick Marcelin killed himself in his friend's apartment in Mattapan.
Six-year-old Destin Marcelin was smothered to death on Sept. 4 in Mattapan by his father, who committed suicide two days later, law enforcement officials said Tuesday, announcing that they were closing their investigation into the deaths.
Patrick Marcelin, 49, killed both his son and then himself, according to Boston police and Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley. The elder Marcelin acted alone, authorities said.
“The facts and evidence tell us what happened, but we may never know why,” Conley said in a statement.
“The tragedy here is only compounded by the fact that it offers no motive and no explanation. Our hearts and prayers are with Destin’s loved ones as they mourn his loss at such a young and innocent age.”
According to authorities, the state medical examiner’s office concluded that the child died on Sept. 4 from “homicidal asphyxia” when his father smothered him by putting pressure on his neck or his chest or “some combination of the two.’’
“The death of a child is always troubling,” Boston Police Commissioner William B. Evans said in a statement. “We express our deepest sympathies to the family and friends of young Destin.”
On the morning of his first day of school, Destin was found “unresponsive” in bed in the Devon Street home of Marcelin relatives, authorities said.
His father left the home at about 7:20 a.m., telling relatives his son was sleeping. But when a relative checked on him at about 9:30 a.m., the child was cold to the touch, leading residents to call 911 for help.
Destin was pronounced dead at the scene.
His father kept sporadic contact with relatives over the next two days, during which he vowed to hurt himself.
When police located him on Sept. 6, he slashed his wrists with a kitchen knife and stabbed himself in the chest, despite efforts by officers and others to stop him.
Authorities said that their conclusion that Patrick Marcelin murdered his son was based on interviews with relatives and video footage, and that “Patrick Marcelin’s own statements and behavior all implicate him as his son’s killer.’’
Authorities said they briefed Destin’s mother on their findings and notified the state Department of Children and Families, although there was “no evidence of abusive or criminal conduct by any other person.’’
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Dad with "longtime custody" apparently killed 6-year-old son in murder-suicide; had previously denied mom visitation (Dorchester, Massachusetts)
This account is more detailed than most of this type. Though it's not specifically indicated that the father killed the son, it's seems likely given that the boy's death appeared "criminal" and took place in the custodial father's home and during the father's care.
Still, in most articles like this, the father's custodial status wouldn't be reported at all. For that, Peter Schworm is to be commended.
There are still some troubling vague points, though.
1) Why did Mom lose custody to begin with? I suspect that it was one of those vague "neglect" charges often leveled against mothers without a lot of money. Mom reports she met the demands of the (unnamed) social service agency, but she was still unable to get custody back from the father, who had also DENIED HER VISITATION.
2) Funny, that. The fathers rights crowd (who are very powerful in Massachusetts) tell us how it's MOMS who prevent the fathers from seeing the kids. On the contrary, once again we see an example of Classic Reversal. In reality, mothers are under tremendous pressure to involve fathers because after all, every kid needs a father, ad nauseum. (They don't really, but this is the ideology being pushed). But on the flip side, fathers who acquire custody have no problem shutting out Mom, and nobody ever calls them on it. Moms are undermined and dismissed in a way that father's aren't.
3) Custodial fathers who shut out mothers are typically control freaks and abusers. Among the killer dads with custody that we monitor here, the vast majority had moved away from the mother and shut out all contact with the child, even by phone. The fact that Dad shut off all contact--just by itself--SHOULD HAVE raised red flags in and of itself. But once again, we see that fathers consistently get away with this.
4) Did the father have a previous history of domestic violence and/or mental instability? Somebody who apparently kills a child, then answers the door with a kitchen knife (after the police ask his name), then starts slashing his wrists, doesn't exactly seem to be a model of mental health. And this kind of behavior doesn't typically develop overnight.
5) So if Dad had a history of volatility and controlling behavior, who gave him custody and why? But those who set up these deaths are almost NEVER held accountable.
So much for dads being discriminated against. Once again, we see blatant father favoritism, and once again, a child has paid for that with his life.
Dad is identified as PATRICK MARCELIN.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/08/father-who-took-own-life-after-death-year-old-son-had-longtime-custody/om7VvpnY8S9RpcQo2ud9lM/story.html
Father who took own life after death of 6-year-old son had longtime custody
By Peter Schworm | Globe staff September 09, 2014
The Dorchester man who authorities say killed himself Saturday when approached by police to question him in the death of his 6-year-old son had been the primary caregiver for the boy since he was born, court records show.
Patrick Marcelin, who took his own life with a kitchen knife before police could question him, had custody of his son, Destin Williams- Marcelin, and had lived with him on Devon Street for several years, according to probate records. Williams-Marcelin’s mother, Nancy Williams of Easton, had visitation rights.
Court records show that Williams and Marcelin clashed over visitation rights and child support. In 2009, when Destin was 1, Williams said she wanted custody.
“I want custody of my son because his father hasn’t let me see my son in 9 weeks,” she wrote. “I also want my son because I have been doing everything that [social services] has wanted.’’
On Thursday morning, paramedics were called to the Devon Street apartment for a report of a child in cardiac arrest. The child, whom authorities did not name, died at his home. The state’s medical examiner’s office will conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death, authorities said Monday. Test results could take several weeks.
Authorities would not say whether the cause of Destin’s death appeared criminal, but said Sunday that the child had some history of medical issues.
Investigators are looking into the “facts and circumstances of the boy’s death,” said Jake Wark, spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney’s office. Relatives of the child declined to comment Monday.
A funeral announcement said services were planned for Friday. In addition to his mother, Destin left four brothers, it said.
Marcelin was not present at the Devon Street home when police arrived, and on Friday detectives learned from a family member that he had spoken about wanting to hurt himself.
Around 4:30 p.m. Saturday, detectives found Marcelin, 49, at a friend’s apartment on Morton Street in Mattapan. Marcelin answered the door holding a kitchen knife. After a detective asked whether his name was Patrick, he ran down the hall while cutting his wrists, a friend said.
Officers took the knife away, and Marcelin was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Marcelin’s friend, Robert Lee, said Marcelin was not himself Saturday, and said he had had a rough night. Marcelin had paid close attention to the news on television, but said nothing about the death of his son, Lee said.
The family was not involved with the state’s child welfare agency. Previous involvement ended in 2010.
On Devon Street on Monday, residents said they did not know the family, but were saddened by the deaths.
Still, in most articles like this, the father's custodial status wouldn't be reported at all. For that, Peter Schworm is to be commended.
There are still some troubling vague points, though.
1) Why did Mom lose custody to begin with? I suspect that it was one of those vague "neglect" charges often leveled against mothers without a lot of money. Mom reports she met the demands of the (unnamed) social service agency, but she was still unable to get custody back from the father, who had also DENIED HER VISITATION.
2) Funny, that. The fathers rights crowd (who are very powerful in Massachusetts) tell us how it's MOMS who prevent the fathers from seeing the kids. On the contrary, once again we see an example of Classic Reversal. In reality, mothers are under tremendous pressure to involve fathers because after all, every kid needs a father, ad nauseum. (They don't really, but this is the ideology being pushed). But on the flip side, fathers who acquire custody have no problem shutting out Mom, and nobody ever calls them on it. Moms are undermined and dismissed in a way that father's aren't.
3) Custodial fathers who shut out mothers are typically control freaks and abusers. Among the killer dads with custody that we monitor here, the vast majority had moved away from the mother and shut out all contact with the child, even by phone. The fact that Dad shut off all contact--just by itself--SHOULD HAVE raised red flags in and of itself. But once again, we see that fathers consistently get away with this.
4) Did the father have a previous history of domestic violence and/or mental instability? Somebody who apparently kills a child, then answers the door with a kitchen knife (after the police ask his name), then starts slashing his wrists, doesn't exactly seem to be a model of mental health. And this kind of behavior doesn't typically develop overnight.
5) So if Dad had a history of volatility and controlling behavior, who gave him custody and why? But those who set up these deaths are almost NEVER held accountable.
So much for dads being discriminated against. Once again, we see blatant father favoritism, and once again, a child has paid for that with his life.
Dad is identified as PATRICK MARCELIN.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/09/08/father-who-took-own-life-after-death-year-old-son-had-longtime-custody/om7VvpnY8S9RpcQo2ud9lM/story.html
Father who took own life after death of 6-year-old son had longtime custody
By Peter Schworm | Globe staff September 09, 2014
The Dorchester man who authorities say killed himself Saturday when approached by police to question him in the death of his 6-year-old son had been the primary caregiver for the boy since he was born, court records show.
Patrick Marcelin, who took his own life with a kitchen knife before police could question him, had custody of his son, Destin Williams- Marcelin, and had lived with him on Devon Street for several years, according to probate records. Williams-Marcelin’s mother, Nancy Williams of Easton, had visitation rights.
Court records show that Williams and Marcelin clashed over visitation rights and child support. In 2009, when Destin was 1, Williams said she wanted custody.
“I want custody of my son because his father hasn’t let me see my son in 9 weeks,” she wrote. “I also want my son because I have been doing everything that [social services] has wanted.’’
On Thursday morning, paramedics were called to the Devon Street apartment for a report of a child in cardiac arrest. The child, whom authorities did not name, died at his home. The state’s medical examiner’s office will conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death, authorities said Monday. Test results could take several weeks.
Authorities would not say whether the cause of Destin’s death appeared criminal, but said Sunday that the child had some history of medical issues.
Investigators are looking into the “facts and circumstances of the boy’s death,” said Jake Wark, spokesman for the Suffolk district attorney’s office. Relatives of the child declined to comment Monday.
A funeral announcement said services were planned for Friday. In addition to his mother, Destin left four brothers, it said.
Marcelin was not present at the Devon Street home when police arrived, and on Friday detectives learned from a family member that he had spoken about wanting to hurt himself.
Around 4:30 p.m. Saturday, detectives found Marcelin, 49, at a friend’s apartment on Morton Street in Mattapan. Marcelin answered the door holding a kitchen knife. After a detective asked whether his name was Patrick, he ran down the hall while cutting his wrists, a friend said.
Officers took the knife away, and Marcelin was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Marcelin’s friend, Robert Lee, said Marcelin was not himself Saturday, and said he had had a rough night. Marcelin had paid close attention to the news on television, but said nothing about the death of his son, Lee said.
The family was not involved with the state’s child welfare agency. Previous involvement ended in 2010.
On Devon Street on Monday, residents said they did not know the family, but were saddened by the deaths.
Saturday, September 6, 2014
Dad uses 3-year-old daughter as human shield after car crash, police chase (Brockton, Massachusetts)
Moms may not be perfect, but they very seldom pull this macho s***.
Dad is identified as KENTON WRIGHT JR.
http://www.news10.com/story/26456439/police-brockton-man-uses-daughter-as-shield
Police: Brockton man uses daughter as shield
Posted: Sep 05, 2014 8:30 AM EDT
Updated: Sep 05, 2014 12:18 PM EDT
BROCKTON, Mass. (AP) - Police say a Brockton man led police on a car chase through four towns with his 3-year-old daughter in the vehicle, crashed his car, used the little girl as a shield, then dropped her and tried to run away.
Kenton Wright Jr. was held on $15,000 bail after pleading not guilty Thursday to charges including reckless endangerment of a child, failure to stop for a police officer, and drug possession.
The chase started at about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday when the 30-year-old Wright allegedly fled a traffic stop in Holbrook. The chase went through Weymouth and Abington before the car crashed into a utility pole in Brockton.
The Enterprise (http://bit.ly/1uoBpU5 ) reports that the girl was taken to a hospital as a precaution but was OK.
Kenton has a pending drug case.
Dad is identified as KENTON WRIGHT JR.
http://www.news10.com/story/26456439/police-brockton-man-uses-daughter-as-shield
Police: Brockton man uses daughter as shield
Posted: Sep 05, 2014 8:30 AM EDT
Updated: Sep 05, 2014 12:18 PM EDT
BROCKTON, Mass. (AP) - Police say a Brockton man led police on a car chase through four towns with his 3-year-old daughter in the vehicle, crashed his car, used the little girl as a shield, then dropped her and tried to run away.
Kenton Wright Jr. was held on $15,000 bail after pleading not guilty Thursday to charges including reckless endangerment of a child, failure to stop for a police officer, and drug possession.
The chase started at about 9:30 p.m. Wednesday when the 30-year-old Wright allegedly fled a traffic stop in Holbrook. The chase went through Weymouth and Abington before the car crashed into a utility pole in Brockton.
The Enterprise (http://bit.ly/1uoBpU5 ) reports that the girl was taken to a hospital as a precaution but was OK.
Kenton has a pending drug case.
Monday, July 21, 2014
A question of proof: when alleged rapists sue for parental rights (USA)
http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21607887-when-alleged-rapists-sue-parental-rights-question-proof
A question of proof When alleged rapists sue for parental rights
Jul 19th 2014 | WASHINGTON, DC
JAIME MELENDEZ was a 20-year-old with a chequered past when he raped H.T., a 14-year-old girl, in Dedham, Massachusetts in 2009. H.T. was often home alone after school; her mother worked at the local hospital and her father was dead. Mr Melendez visited her when she was on her own, coerced her to have sex and then threatened her to stay silent. When H.T. became pregnant her doctor called the police. In 2011 Mr Melendez pleaded guilty to rape of a minor.
The judge sentenced him to 16 years of probation and ordered him to submit to a family court, which in 2012 ordered him to pay child support until the infant reaches adulthood. Before then, Mr Melendez had shown no interest in his daughter, but afterwards he demanded to be allowed to visit her. He said it was his right as a father; adding that he would drop the request if he no longer had to pay child support.
H.T. does not want Mr Melendez anywhere near her or her family. And indeed, he has not visited them. But the courts have not thrown out his lawsuit, which has been grinding along for two years now. H.T.’s lawyer, Wendy Murphy, calls it barbaric. “You would never say to a person who suffered a crime, ‘Sorry, we’re going to let this guy further destroy your life’.”
In Massachusetts no law explicitly restricts the parental rights of men who father a child through rape. So rapists can petition for custody or visiting privileges, and generally make life miserable for survivors. The same is true in 16 other states plus Washington, DC.
It is not clear how common such cases are, since custody battles take place in family courts where records are often sealed. Judges in those courts prefer to keep a father in the picture, but can cut him out if he is abusive or neglectful.
Being convicted of a violent felony can often be grounds for revoking parental rights, especially if the parent in question goes to prison or the crime involved a member of the family. But judges have wide discretion to weigh the circumstances of each family that appears before them. The emphasis is always on the best interests of the child. Massachusetts allows a court to terminate parental rights if “the parent has been convicted of a felony that the court finds is of such a nature that the child will be deprived of a stable home for a period of years.” Common sense suggests that should apply to rape, and most judges are sensible; but not all.
Furthermore, most rapists are never convicted. The crime is hard to prove, since it often comes down to the victim’s word against her attacker’s. Only 12% of rapes result in an arrest, let alone a conviction, estimates the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Paternity, by contrast, is easy to prove, thanks to DNA tests. So there are cases where the court knows a man is the father but does not know he is a rapist.
Some of these men discover they are fathers only when the state targets them for child support, as single mothers must identify them to qualify for government assistance. This prompts some to file a lawsuit of their own. “They just say: ‘If I’m going to pay for it, I’m going to see it’,” says Rebecca Kiessling, a family-law attorney. It can be a way to punish victims, or intimidate survivors into refusing to testify against them. “Like with rape, this is just about power and control,” says Ms Kiessling.
Angela Grogg says that her daughter became pregnant from rape in 2010, when she was 14. The father of Mrs Grogg’s grandson was tried for rape but acquitted in 2012. He maintains his innocence and sued for visitation rights. Mrs Grogg has waged a public battle against him. A Missouri judge finally terminated his parental rights this year, after $60,000 in legal bills. “We’ve got thousands of e-mails from women who are going through [the same thing],” says Mrs Grogg.
An estimated 25,000-32,000 women become pregnant from rape each year. Activists such as the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network want state laws to offer better protection for those who choose to keep and raise their children. Most of all, they want an easier standard of proof. Rather than requiring a criminal conviction, they say it would be more reasonable to let a judge terminate a father’s parental rights on the basis of “clear and convincing evidence” that the child was conceived in rape. This is the same standard family courts use to decide whether a child has been abused or neglected.
Eight states already end parental rights if there is “clear and convincing” evidence that the mother was raped. Two more are about to follow suit, and a federal bill introduced by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, promises federal grants to others that do likewise. That won’t help all victims. But it is a start.
A question of proof When alleged rapists sue for parental rights
Jul 19th 2014 | WASHINGTON, DC
JAIME MELENDEZ was a 20-year-old with a chequered past when he raped H.T., a 14-year-old girl, in Dedham, Massachusetts in 2009. H.T. was often home alone after school; her mother worked at the local hospital and her father was dead. Mr Melendez visited her when she was on her own, coerced her to have sex and then threatened her to stay silent. When H.T. became pregnant her doctor called the police. In 2011 Mr Melendez pleaded guilty to rape of a minor.
The judge sentenced him to 16 years of probation and ordered him to submit to a family court, which in 2012 ordered him to pay child support until the infant reaches adulthood. Before then, Mr Melendez had shown no interest in his daughter, but afterwards he demanded to be allowed to visit her. He said it was his right as a father; adding that he would drop the request if he no longer had to pay child support.
H.T. does not want Mr Melendez anywhere near her or her family. And indeed, he has not visited them. But the courts have not thrown out his lawsuit, which has been grinding along for two years now. H.T.’s lawyer, Wendy Murphy, calls it barbaric. “You would never say to a person who suffered a crime, ‘Sorry, we’re going to let this guy further destroy your life’.”
In Massachusetts no law explicitly restricts the parental rights of men who father a child through rape. So rapists can petition for custody or visiting privileges, and generally make life miserable for survivors. The same is true in 16 other states plus Washington, DC.
It is not clear how common such cases are, since custody battles take place in family courts where records are often sealed. Judges in those courts prefer to keep a father in the picture, but can cut him out if he is abusive or neglectful.
Being convicted of a violent felony can often be grounds for revoking parental rights, especially if the parent in question goes to prison or the crime involved a member of the family. But judges have wide discretion to weigh the circumstances of each family that appears before them. The emphasis is always on the best interests of the child. Massachusetts allows a court to terminate parental rights if “the parent has been convicted of a felony that the court finds is of such a nature that the child will be deprived of a stable home for a period of years.” Common sense suggests that should apply to rape, and most judges are sensible; but not all.
Furthermore, most rapists are never convicted. The crime is hard to prove, since it often comes down to the victim’s word against her attacker’s. Only 12% of rapes result in an arrest, let alone a conviction, estimates the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Paternity, by contrast, is easy to prove, thanks to DNA tests. So there are cases where the court knows a man is the father but does not know he is a rapist.
Some of these men discover they are fathers only when the state targets them for child support, as single mothers must identify them to qualify for government assistance. This prompts some to file a lawsuit of their own. “They just say: ‘If I’m going to pay for it, I’m going to see it’,” says Rebecca Kiessling, a family-law attorney. It can be a way to punish victims, or intimidate survivors into refusing to testify against them. “Like with rape, this is just about power and control,” says Ms Kiessling.
Angela Grogg says that her daughter became pregnant from rape in 2010, when she was 14. The father of Mrs Grogg’s grandson was tried for rape but acquitted in 2012. He maintains his innocence and sued for visitation rights. Mrs Grogg has waged a public battle against him. A Missouri judge finally terminated his parental rights this year, after $60,000 in legal bills. “We’ve got thousands of e-mails from women who are going through [the same thing],” says Mrs Grogg.
An estimated 25,000-32,000 women become pregnant from rape each year. Activists such as the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network want state laws to offer better protection for those who choose to keep and raise their children. Most of all, they want an easier standard of proof. Rather than requiring a criminal conviction, they say it would be more reasonable to let a judge terminate a father’s parental rights on the basis of “clear and convincing evidence” that the child was conceived in rape. This is the same standard family courts use to decide whether a child has been abused or neglected.
Eight states already end parental rights if there is “clear and convincing” evidence that the mother was raped. Two more are about to follow suit, and a federal bill introduced by Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida congresswoman, promises federal grants to others that do likewise. That won’t help all victims. But it is a start.
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Dad charged with beating 10-year-old son (Everett, Massachusetts)
Read between the lines here. The parents do not live together, and the father has remarried. This is a custody/visitation situation where the father STILL has access despite the son's reports of prior beatings. And notice that these aren't "spankings." They are in fact beatings, despite the attempts of Daddy's lawyer to call this "discipline." This boy has bruising all along his backside.
How much you want to bet Daddy had a history of domestic violence/child abuse but got his custody rights anyway? Yet another triumph of fathers rights....
Dad is identified as JERMAINE BELLARD.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/06/13/everett-cop-charged-with-beating-son-with-belt/g305jWAwRC12h0fCGz4v0O/story.html
Everett Cop Charged with Beating Son, 10, with Belt
By Robert Burgess
Boston.com Staff
June 13, 2014 3:21 PM
An Everett police officer has been charged with child abuse for allegedly beating his 10-year-old with a belt after the father got a negative report about the son’s behavior from the boy’s school principal, according to media reports.
WHDH reported that Saugus police arrested Jermaine Bellard, 32, and charged him with assault and battery of a child.
WBZ reported that hospital officials called police after assessing the injuries, which included bruises on his back and buttocks.
A lawyer for the boy said the child was beaten by his 260-pound father because a school official had notified the parents that he was acting up in school.
The boy reported that his father beat him 14 times with a belt after he was told to lie on a bed, according to WBZ. The boy also said that this wasn’t the first time he had been beaten by his father.
A Lynn District Court judge in the case set bail for Bellard at $1,000 and ordered the man to stay away from his son and the child’s mother, reported WHDH. Bellard has two other children with his current wife.
The boy’s lawyer had asked for $10,000 bail.
But Bellard’s lawyer argued that the man, on the Everett police force since 2012, was a good police officer and not a flight risk. The lawyer suggested that there is legal precedent for parents disciplining their children, according to WHDH.
How much you want to bet Daddy had a history of domestic violence/child abuse but got his custody rights anyway? Yet another triumph of fathers rights....
Dad is identified as JERMAINE BELLARD.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2014/06/13/everett-cop-charged-with-beating-son-with-belt/g305jWAwRC12h0fCGz4v0O/story.html
Everett Cop Charged with Beating Son, 10, with Belt
By Robert Burgess
Boston.com Staff
June 13, 2014 3:21 PM
An Everett police officer has been charged with child abuse for allegedly beating his 10-year-old with a belt after the father got a negative report about the son’s behavior from the boy’s school principal, according to media reports.
WHDH reported that Saugus police arrested Jermaine Bellard, 32, and charged him with assault and battery of a child.
WBZ reported that hospital officials called police after assessing the injuries, which included bruises on his back and buttocks.
A lawyer for the boy said the child was beaten by his 260-pound father because a school official had notified the parents that he was acting up in school.
The boy reported that his father beat him 14 times with a belt after he was told to lie on a bed, according to WBZ. The boy also said that this wasn’t the first time he had been beaten by his father.
A Lynn District Court judge in the case set bail for Bellard at $1,000 and ordered the man to stay away from his son and the child’s mother, reported WHDH. Bellard has two other children with his current wife.
The boy’s lawyer had asked for $10,000 bail.
But Bellard’s lawyer argued that the man, on the Everett police force since 2012, was a good police officer and not a flight risk. The lawyer suggested that there is legal precedent for parents disciplining their children, according to WHDH.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Dad uses "fathers rights" arguments to defend his murder of Mom in front of 5-year-old daughter (Woburn, Massachusetts)
In recent days, a fair number of commentators have called attention to spree killer Elliot Rogers and his links to men's rights groups, who have now crowned him as their new hero. You know, the charming fellows that demand women give them sex on demand. Because they're men, damn it, and they deserve it!!!! Never mind that they're all pathetic (but latently dangerous) losers.
Lost in the media coverage has been the equally entitled killer @sshole and father, JARED REMY, who uses standard fathers rights arguments to defend his murder of the mother of his 5-year-old daughter IN FRONT OF HER NO LESS. She "threatened" me with "my child"!!! He whines. It's all about my rights as a father!!! That's why I killed her!
Once again, the same entitled lying bullsh**--and tied to yet another brutal murder. Chalk up another one for the fathers rights terrorists.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/27/yvonne-abraham-remy-plea-was-maddeningly-defiant/GsPCe1NgcvBb7UAvIksT4K/story.html?rss_id=Top-GNP
Jared Remy’s plea was maddeningly defiant
By Yvonne Abraham | Globe Staff
May 27, 2014
WOBURN -- What a bizarre mix of contrition and blame-shifting we saw in Middlesex Superior Court Tuesday. What a spectacle of the depths to which people can sink. What a vividly detailed map of the wasteland brutality leaves behind.
Standing in that low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit courtroom, Jared Remy called Jennifer Martel -- the woman he murdered with gruesome force as their almost-five-year-old daughter was nearby -- an “angel.”
He’s the one at fault for killing her, he said. No share of the blame should go to his parents, whom his lawyer said had been unfairly maligned, held partly responsible by some for not doing more to rein in a violent son who had for years been spiralling blatantly out of control.
“Blame me for this, not my family,” Remy said in his statement to the court. “They thought of Jen as their fourth kid…They all loved each other…I’m the bad apple. If you ask my family, they’d rather have me dead instead of her.”
What Jared Remy did today is rare, and remarkable: Pleading guilty to first degree murder, guaranteeing he would spend the rest of his life in prison without parole. He could have taken his chances with a jury. And though those chances were slim – there were multiple witnesses to the mind-bending violence of that August night – he might have argued drugs or mental illness were mitigating factors.
But in addition to accepting responsibility, Jared Remy also brushed some of it aside.
For a man surrendering to fate, he was maddeningly defiant. He said he murdered Martel after she took up a knife, and violated a clear rule he said he had set.
“I told Jen she could leave,” he said. “Just don’t threaten me with my child...I don’t think it’s right when women use their kids against their fathers.”
But Jen Martel did threaten to use their child against him, Remy said, “so I killed her.”
It was a chilling, appalling, this matter of fact assertion of cause and effect. His twisted invocation of his rights as a father -- he mentioned it once on the stand, and again in his statement -- mocked all of the lofty talk of accepting responsibility that preceded it. Even as he sat in handcuffs and leg chains, admitting he had done something unspeakably awful, he was blaming his victim.
Jared Remy didn’t get it then. And he doesn’t get it now.
The events of that night were laid out by the prosecutor in sickening detail. Remy attacked Martel with enough force to kill her many times over. He stabbed her repeatedly, at one point using two hands to plunge a knife into her. He was ready to attack anyone who tried to save her. When she clung, improbably, to life, he beat her, knocking her unconscious. Then, satisfied he had killed her, he wrapped her face in his tank top, like a shroud.
If you are guilty of that level of insane violence, you don’t get to say your victim did anything to make it happen. Ever.
Afterwards, Remy’s attorney Ed Ryan said he hadn’t meant to shift blame, that he was accepting full responsibility. He said Remy was remorseful, but blocked by his limitations and his depression medication from expressing emotion.
We certainly saw plenty of his limitations today. Remy seemed confused by the judge’s question about whether he really wanted to change his plea. He read his final statement haltingly, and without feeling, except for the part where he upbraided two unidentified people for using Martel to make themselves look better. More blame-shifting.
In some ways, it’s over now. Attorneys on both sides will move on. So will the crush of media attention. Remy will be in prison until his dying day. The world is better for that. Watching him shuffle out of the courtroom, you couldn’t help rewinding the tape, longing for it to have happened sooner: Before he came back to the apartment that night; before Martel changed her relationship status to “complicated” on Facebook a little earlier; before he terrorized her two days previous; before they’d ever met.
But for all of the misery he has caused, the brute who pleaded guilty Tuesday has at least spared those who loved Martel a little pain.
Just a little.
The most moving words of this gut-wrenching day came from Kristina Hill, Martel’s dear friend and neighbor, and a witness to her murder. As she spoke, her curly haired son, not yet two, slept soundly in his stroller, his body slumped forward, his tiny hands clutching a blue sippy-cup.
Martel was going to be that little boy’s godmother, Hill said.
“I don’t know if I touched her in the same way she touched me, but she was my best friend,” Hill said. She spoke of the doubt and sense of guilt that plagues her every free moment. She wondered whether Jen understood the dire warnings from her loved ones, whether she felt alone, whether she was in terrible pain at the end, whether Hill herself had done enough to keep her best friend safe.
“I wonder if she knows I failed her,” Hill said, crying hard now.
Dozens of people have surely been asking themselves that question for the last nine months – family, friends, police officers and prosecutors. We’ll never know whether any of those people doing more would have saved Martel’s life.
But only one person really controlled her fate, and that was the man who sat in that courtroom Tuesday. Jared Remy can blame steroids or Martel’s threats or any number of mitigating factors. But it was all him.
Those who loved Jennifer Martel should know that. They should know they are as blameless in her murder as Hill’s little boy, who slept through all of the gruesomeness in the courtroom, waking just as Remy was led away.
And as Hill wheeled him out, the little boy who would have been Jennifer Martel’s godson looked up at his mother, a picture of innocence, his face full of love.
It’s the love we all start with, the love that Jared Remy stole from his daughter, and Jennifer Martel took to her grave.
Lost in the media coverage has been the equally entitled killer @sshole and father, JARED REMY, who uses standard fathers rights arguments to defend his murder of the mother of his 5-year-old daughter IN FRONT OF HER NO LESS. She "threatened" me with "my child"!!! He whines. It's all about my rights as a father!!! That's why I killed her!
Once again, the same entitled lying bullsh**--and tied to yet another brutal murder. Chalk up another one for the fathers rights terrorists.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/27/yvonne-abraham-remy-plea-was-maddeningly-defiant/GsPCe1NgcvBb7UAvIksT4K/story.html?rss_id=Top-GNP
Jared Remy’s plea was maddeningly defiant
By Yvonne Abraham | Globe Staff
May 27, 2014
WOBURN -- What a bizarre mix of contrition and blame-shifting we saw in Middlesex Superior Court Tuesday. What a spectacle of the depths to which people can sink. What a vividly detailed map of the wasteland brutality leaves behind.
Standing in that low-ceilinged, fluorescent-lit courtroom, Jared Remy called Jennifer Martel -- the woman he murdered with gruesome force as their almost-five-year-old daughter was nearby -- an “angel.”
He’s the one at fault for killing her, he said. No share of the blame should go to his parents, whom his lawyer said had been unfairly maligned, held partly responsible by some for not doing more to rein in a violent son who had for years been spiralling blatantly out of control.
“Blame me for this, not my family,” Remy said in his statement to the court. “They thought of Jen as their fourth kid…They all loved each other…I’m the bad apple. If you ask my family, they’d rather have me dead instead of her.”
What Jared Remy did today is rare, and remarkable: Pleading guilty to first degree murder, guaranteeing he would spend the rest of his life in prison without parole. He could have taken his chances with a jury. And though those chances were slim – there were multiple witnesses to the mind-bending violence of that August night – he might have argued drugs or mental illness were mitigating factors.
But in addition to accepting responsibility, Jared Remy also brushed some of it aside.
For a man surrendering to fate, he was maddeningly defiant. He said he murdered Martel after she took up a knife, and violated a clear rule he said he had set.
“I told Jen she could leave,” he said. “Just don’t threaten me with my child...I don’t think it’s right when women use their kids against their fathers.”
But Jen Martel did threaten to use their child against him, Remy said, “so I killed her.”
It was a chilling, appalling, this matter of fact assertion of cause and effect. His twisted invocation of his rights as a father -- he mentioned it once on the stand, and again in his statement -- mocked all of the lofty talk of accepting responsibility that preceded it. Even as he sat in handcuffs and leg chains, admitting he had done something unspeakably awful, he was blaming his victim.
Jared Remy didn’t get it then. And he doesn’t get it now.
The events of that night were laid out by the prosecutor in sickening detail. Remy attacked Martel with enough force to kill her many times over. He stabbed her repeatedly, at one point using two hands to plunge a knife into her. He was ready to attack anyone who tried to save her. When she clung, improbably, to life, he beat her, knocking her unconscious. Then, satisfied he had killed her, he wrapped her face in his tank top, like a shroud.
If you are guilty of that level of insane violence, you don’t get to say your victim did anything to make it happen. Ever.
Afterwards, Remy’s attorney Ed Ryan said he hadn’t meant to shift blame, that he was accepting full responsibility. He said Remy was remorseful, but blocked by his limitations and his depression medication from expressing emotion.
We certainly saw plenty of his limitations today. Remy seemed confused by the judge’s question about whether he really wanted to change his plea. He read his final statement haltingly, and without feeling, except for the part where he upbraided two unidentified people for using Martel to make themselves look better. More blame-shifting.
In some ways, it’s over now. Attorneys on both sides will move on. So will the crush of media attention. Remy will be in prison until his dying day. The world is better for that. Watching him shuffle out of the courtroom, you couldn’t help rewinding the tape, longing for it to have happened sooner: Before he came back to the apartment that night; before Martel changed her relationship status to “complicated” on Facebook a little earlier; before he terrorized her two days previous; before they’d ever met.
But for all of the misery he has caused, the brute who pleaded guilty Tuesday has at least spared those who loved Martel a little pain.
Just a little.
The most moving words of this gut-wrenching day came from Kristina Hill, Martel’s dear friend and neighbor, and a witness to her murder. As she spoke, her curly haired son, not yet two, slept soundly in his stroller, his body slumped forward, his tiny hands clutching a blue sippy-cup.
Martel was going to be that little boy’s godmother, Hill said.
“I don’t know if I touched her in the same way she touched me, but she was my best friend,” Hill said. She spoke of the doubt and sense of guilt that plagues her every free moment. She wondered whether Jen understood the dire warnings from her loved ones, whether she felt alone, whether she was in terrible pain at the end, whether Hill herself had done enough to keep her best friend safe.
“I wonder if she knows I failed her,” Hill said, crying hard now.
Dozens of people have surely been asking themselves that question for the last nine months – family, friends, police officers and prosecutors. We’ll never know whether any of those people doing more would have saved Martel’s life.
But only one person really controlled her fate, and that was the man who sat in that courtroom Tuesday. Jared Remy can blame steroids or Martel’s threats or any number of mitigating factors. But it was all him.
Those who loved Jennifer Martel should know that. They should know they are as blameless in her murder as Hill’s little boy, who slept through all of the gruesomeness in the courtroom, waking just as Remy was led away.
And as Hill wheeled him out, the little boy who would have been Jennifer Martel’s godson looked up at his mother, a picture of innocence, his face full of love.
It’s the love we all start with, the love that Jared Remy stole from his daughter, and Jennifer Martel took to her grave.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Update on dad convicted of killing 7-year-old son during court-ordered summer visitation (Worcester, Massachusetts)
No tears of grief for dad LESLIE G. SCHULER, who just HAD to have "his rights"....
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/23/worcester-man-who-beat-his-son-death-father-day-found-hanged-walpole-state-prison-cell-death-not-suspicious-officials-say/q3twN1N8628m1d6rLylhrK/story.html
Worcester man who beat son to death found hanged in prison
By John R. Ellement | Globe staff
May 23, 2014
Leslie G. Schuler had pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of his son in Worcester Superior Court this month.
Rick Cinclair/Telegram & Gazette/AP
A man who admitted to murdering his 7-year-old son on Father’s Day in 2009 was found hanged in his cell early Friday at the state prison in Walpole, the state Department of Correction said.
Leslie G. Schuler was serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 years following his guilty plea to second-degree murder in Worcester Superior Court this month, said the Correction Department and the Worcester district attorney’s office.
Schuler was in a cell by himself in the maximum-security prison when he was discovered at about 4:30 a.m., Correction Department spokesman Darren Duarte said in an e-mail.
The prison, formally known as MCI-Cedar Junction, is a facility where men who are newly committed to state prison spend their first few months behind bars before being transferred to other prisons across the state, according to the Correction Department website.
A spokesman for Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey, whose office is investigating Schuler’s death, said the Worcester man was discovered in his cell by a correction officer making routine rounds.
“His death does not appear to be suspicious at this time,’’ spokesman David Traub said.
The state medical examiner’s office will determine a cause of death and decide whether Schuler, 41, committed suicide, officials said.
According to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, a Worcester prosecutor said in court May 6 that the child, Nathaniel Turner, was taken off attention deficit medication in 2009 by his father, who began physically disciplining him, including spanking him.
The boy had been raised by his grandmother in Alabama until Schuler obtained a court order allowing him to spend the summer with him in Worcester, the Telegram reported.
The physical violence against the child escalated, and on Father’s Day in 2009, Schuler became enraged when his son vomited on a Father’s Day card. Schuler grabbed the child by the neck, struck him in the face, pushed him into a wall, and poked him in the stomach, the Telegram said.
When the child vomited a second time, Schuler knocked him off a chair, causing the child to hit his head on the floor, according to court records.
The boy was unresponsive the next day and was taken to St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, where he died two days later, the Telegram reported. Schuler was arrested in 2009 and had been in custody since then, the newspaper said.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/05/23/worcester-man-who-beat-his-son-death-father-day-found-hanged-walpole-state-prison-cell-death-not-suspicious-officials-say/q3twN1N8628m1d6rLylhrK/story.html
Worcester man who beat son to death found hanged in prison
By John R. Ellement | Globe staff
May 23, 2014
Leslie G. Schuler had pleaded guilty to the second-degree murder of his son in Worcester Superior Court this month.
Rick Cinclair/Telegram & Gazette/AP
A man who admitted to murdering his 7-year-old son on Father’s Day in 2009 was found hanged in his cell early Friday at the state prison in Walpole, the state Department of Correction said.
Leslie G. Schuler was serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 years following his guilty plea to second-degree murder in Worcester Superior Court this month, said the Correction Department and the Worcester district attorney’s office.
Schuler was in a cell by himself in the maximum-security prison when he was discovered at about 4:30 a.m., Correction Department spokesman Darren Duarte said in an e-mail.
The prison, formally known as MCI-Cedar Junction, is a facility where men who are newly committed to state prison spend their first few months behind bars before being transferred to other prisons across the state, according to the Correction Department website.
A spokesman for Norfolk District Attorney Michael Morrissey, whose office is investigating Schuler’s death, said the Worcester man was discovered in his cell by a correction officer making routine rounds.
“His death does not appear to be suspicious at this time,’’ spokesman David Traub said.
The state medical examiner’s office will determine a cause of death and decide whether Schuler, 41, committed suicide, officials said.
According to the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, a Worcester prosecutor said in court May 6 that the child, Nathaniel Turner, was taken off attention deficit medication in 2009 by his father, who began physically disciplining him, including spanking him.
The boy had been raised by his grandmother in Alabama until Schuler obtained a court order allowing him to spend the summer with him in Worcester, the Telegram reported.
The physical violence against the child escalated, and on Father’s Day in 2009, Schuler became enraged when his son vomited on a Father’s Day card. Schuler grabbed the child by the neck, struck him in the face, pushed him into a wall, and poked him in the stomach, the Telegram said.
When the child vomited a second time, Schuler knocked him off a chair, causing the child to hit his head on the floor, according to court records.
The boy was unresponsive the next day and was taken to St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, where he died two days later, the Telegram reported. Schuler was arrested in 2009 and had been in custody since then, the newspaper said.
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