Weird news - Man kills his daughter because she did not smile at him

Sometimes it is difficult to write about something, something so weird that you cannot even imagine how somebody could do this. A parent is somebody who is supposed to protect their children, especially when the child is unable to protect themselves. In nature, the protective nature of parents is incredible, and they say that the biggest danger is standing between a mother bear and its children, since that would make you a threat to the young bears and the bear would act to remove all such dangers. In the case of humans, children need the support of their parents for many many years, till the time that they are in their late tears, and parents put in a lot of effort to ensure that their children get a better future.
In this case, a father felt that he was not able to make a bonding with his daughter, maybe due to the fact that she was living with her grandparents for some time; and given that he had an anger and attitude bad enough that he killed her for something that was not so important, it could be that his behavior towards her was never loving; but killing your own daughter could not be forgiven (link to article):

The man threw his daughter against a wall and then stomped on her because she never smiled at him, the prosecutor told the court. The girl died of fatal injuries in March 2010, 21 days before her third birthday. She was affected with pneumonia, which the court heard had been caused by the injury to her brain. The court heard the accused was not able to form a close bond with his daughter, and became "frustrated and angry" with what he thought was the spoilt behaviour of his child.

Weird news - Parents offered sex with their young girl for paying off loan

Parents are normally seen as extremely protective of their children, especially when the children are vulnerable. It is only when children get much older that they let their children make their critical decisions, especially when it comes to matters such as sex. However, once in a while you come across parents who pervert this relationship, and try to use their children for personal benefits. And when the law finds out such an attempt, the law comes on top of them like a ton of bricks and will almost always penalize them with jail terms, and also take their children away. Read the following story and see whether society has any other option other than what was described in this article (link to target):

Police arrested three people including the parents of an eight-year-old girl, after they allegedly negotiated a deal involving sex with the minor to help pay off a loan, Dutch prosecutors said on Thursday.
“We have detained the parents of the girl after a relative discovered on a laptop, that her parents were offering sex with her as a downpayment to a loan,” Jeichien de Graaff of the Rotterdam prosecutors’ office, said.
Dutch daily Algemeen Dagblad reported that the parents negotiated an amount to be paid in return for sex with the girl and that photos have been exchanged, including pictures of the girl.
The three are facing charges of child abuse, and the making and distribution of child pornography “within the next few weeks,” De Graaff said.

Weird news - Mom tries to sell off her daughter's virginity, daughter is only 13 years old

Some time back, there were a couple of stories about how teenagers (college students) were offering their virginity in an online auction so that they could generate enough money to pay for their studies (or atleast that is what they claimed). There was a lot of controversy about those attempts, with most people accusing them of being immoral, but the law could not really do much about those cases.
Seems like those cases inspired this lady to act in this manner, and in this case, the law would get totally involved, and there would not be any moral or ethical doubt. Parents have the reputation of being able to do anything to help their children, to protect them; protecting them from sexual predators brings out one of the strongest protective instincts in parents. So what do you say when you see a mother trying to sell the virginity of her own daughter, that too somebody who is only 13 years old and is mentally unable to make these decisions by herself (link to article):

A Salt Lake City woman has been charged with offering her 13-year-old daughter's virginity to a man in exchange for $10,000.
The woman was charged Monday in Utah's 3rd District Court with two counts of aggravated sex abuse and two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. KTVX Channel 4 reports that court documents claim she made the offer after the man asked about oral sex with the girl.

Ready to pay off education loan of children by selling their body parts

Parents can do anything for their children, this is a known fact. In the past, parents have fought wild animals, fought with Government authorities, robbers, and numerous other such people trying to hurt their children. Part of the effort to give children a better future is through higher education, and this can be fairly expensive. In one case, the amount of expenses and debt incurred was so high that the parents are willing to sell their body for this purpose (link to article):

Parents offer body parts to pay off kids' education loanHOUSTON: A Boston couple have offered to sell their own body parts to pay off their children's $2,00,000 student loan.
"Use my body for anything legal, or medically experimental . Simply pay off all of my children's student loans and you can use me anyway you need," an advertisement said asking "Do you need a live 'cadaver?'" posted on Craigslist Boston in the "jobs wanted" section of the website.

Weird news - Father kills 7 year old son over matrimonial dispute

Disputes between parents and children is nothing new, but you hear of those typically when both parents and children are adults and both have their own views (and the disputes could be over monetary issues, or over differences of opinion); but when the children are young and defenseless, one gets horrified at scenes of violence between parents and children.
Consider the following case where a father killed his own 7 year old son since he was having a fight with his wife, and this led to his taking out the anger on his own son, hitting him hard with a hammer on the head (link to article):

In a gory fallout of a matrimonial feud, a property dealer from south Delhi killed his seven-year-old son with a hammer blow to his head on Sunday. The victim, Arpit Singh, a class I student of Greenfield Public School, fell dead instantly.
Though police remained tightlipped, it appeared that the attack was a result of a heated argument between Bhupender and his wife. Arpit's 11-year-old sister and his mother were not in the room when the incident took place. Bhupender also reportedly suffers from alcoholism. According to senior police officers, the couple had a bitter argument on Sunday after which Bhupender stomped back to his room. Sources said the argument was over an extra-marital relationship and the manner in which the accused conducted himself in public.

Man hits infant son on the face, ordered to pay 50 pounds as compensation besides other damages

A baby is very fragile, needing constant protection and care from parents. It is also true that when a baby is born, the hormone systems of the parents push hormones through the body, imparting a protecting emotional feeling (much stronger in the mother), so one wonders what is it that makes a person be able to hit a 10 month old defenseless baby; hard enough that it left a mark on the face and also needed medical attention. Well, the case was as simple as something that babies do, knock things around. The after effects ? The father is now estranged from the mother and the son (the mother and father were not married) and defending himself in court (link to article):

A Briton, who slapped his 10-month-old son after he knocked down a photo frame, has been ordered to pay the baby 50 pounds in compensation, a media report said Thursday. The 24-year-old man lost his cool when his son hit the TV while jumping up and down in his baby bouncer, Daily Mail reported.
Rachel Bentley, defending the accused, said the man was now estranged from his partner and son after the incident, which happened two days before Christmas, and he was "sorry". He was also directed to complete 60 hours of community service, be supervised for a year, deal with his anger management and pay the baby 50 pounds in compensation.

Weird - Mother and boyfriend sentenced to more than 5 years for the violent death of her child

The normal image of a mother is one who protects her baby and children at all costs; in fact, in nature, a wild animal is treated as even more dangerous if it is protecting its young - the concept of being a mother is that even nature produces far more hormones to increase this child protection instinct in the mother. So when a baby is found battered with more than 50 injuries, including a broken back and ribs, it would outrage the whole country. What made this crime in England even worse was that social services had the case on their watchlist, and the injured baby escaped inspecting social services workers and a doctor who examined the baby. The workers were fired, and the mother has now been sentenced for a minimum of 5 years (link to article):

Sentencing the mother to a minimum of five years in prison for her role in her toddler's horrific death, Judge Stephen Kramer called the woman "manipulative and self-centered." She and her boyfriend, both of whom cannot be identified for legal reasons, were found guilty of causing the death of the child.
The blonde, blue-eyed toddler had been on a child protection watchlist and was visited dozens of times by social workers. The head of the local children's services, Sharon Shoesmith, initially denied responsibility, but has been fired. She is appealing the decision. The social worker in charge of Baby P's case has also been fired. And the doctor who last saw Baby P and failed to diagnose his broken back and fractured ribs has been dismissed and is no longer able to practice medicine without supervision.

Weird - South Korean couple took care of an online / virtual baby and let real baby starve to death

Sometimes when you read some news, you cannot believe as to how this is possible. When parents have a baby, they are fiercely protective of them, taking care of them, making sure that the baby is getting all the required attention and nourishment. Even poor families try their best to ensure that their children get all the required attention, and Governments have programs to ensure that children get attention, including free meals. A baby is so defenceless and without any ability to take care of itself that it treated as a criminal matter to neglect a child.
Modern virtual games which allow the creation of virtual avatars, friends, relatives, are very engrossing and can lead to people spending large amounts of time, being totally engrossed in these. However, the combination of these events spelt doom for a poor infant in South Korea, whose parents neglected to feed the baby, instead spending all their time on a virtual child, and their baby eventually starved to death (link to article):

The couple, residents of a Seoul suburb, allegedly neglected their prematurely born three-month-old daughter, feeding her just once a day in between 12-hour stretches at a neighborhood internet cafe, the official Yonhap news agency reported.
Professor Kwak Dae-kyung of Seoul's Dongguk University told the Yonhap news agency that the couple appeared to have lost track of reality. "Online game addiction can blur the line between reality and the virtual world. It seems that taking care of their on-line game character erased any sense of guilt they may have had for neglecting their daughter."

Students on school trip see live sex show

Sex shows are something that a number of people like to see, but an equal number of people really don't appreciate, don't consider them morally defensible, and would like their children to stay away from. When you add this to the fact that you consider school a place to bring about a good education, to inculcate morals, then it would be shocking to hear that a school trip involved students being taken to a live sex show.
And this was promoted by the teachers who went along with the trip, and worst of all, the parents did not know about this until they saw it on Facebook (link to article):

A particular snap shows the students aged 16 to 18, and the two teachers sitting around a table littered with beer bottles outside a Bangkok bar.
Now, it has also come to knowledge that later the pupils headed to the city's red light area, whose streets are lined with bars offering sex shows.
Seemingly, the development has created a buzz in the school.
"It is the talk of the school. The teachers, a man and a woman, are fighting for their careers over this because the youngsters were supposed to be in their care," News of the World quoted a source as saying.

Parents locked 12 year girl into closet for an year

Parents are supposed to be the ones responsible for ensuring the development of their children, for educating them; so it becomes very difficult if the parents themselves are responsible for preventing the growth of the child, or for creating a set of circumstances in which the child cannot develop. In such cases, society has to step in, and ensure that the child is separated from the parents and placed in better circumstances.
In this case as well, where this girl was allowed to go to school, but when home, she would have to stay in a closet; and she was the only child on whom this restriction was placed while her brothers were free. The amount of psychological damage this does to a child can be immense (link to article):

Police officers say a young girl was kept locked away in a closet in a West Brownsville duplex by her parents for about a year. She attended school every day and held steady grades, but once she was home she was not allowed to watch television or play with her brothers, investigators said. The 12-year-old girl had to stay inside the closet.
No one would have known of the abuse, police officers said, if one of her brothers had not reported it to officials at his school, which initiated an investigation by Child Protective Services. “Everyone in the house knew what was going on, but you have children, who based on fear, hold this secret,” Sgt. Jimmy Manrrique, Brownsville Police Department spokesman, said.

Corruption even for babies in maternity ward

If there was such a thing such as the height of corruption, then it is in the case where parents get their baby soon after birth. However, in some hospitals, it seems like the staff will not leave even the newborn baby alone, and need money for allowing parents to get a glimpse of the baby, for getting its clothes changed, and so on (link to article):

HYDERABAD: Babies born at government maternity hospitals in city are being delivered to parents with a price tag, threats extra: You can get a glimpse of your baby boy/girl only if you cough up Rs 500/Rs 400 respectively; at some hospitals it costs even more.
According to patients, bargaining only prolongs the agony because these offenders rarely offer a discount. And there’s never an off-season for harassment. “My wife delivered a baby boy today. The hospital attendants and aaya refused to give me my child unless I paid. They refused Rs 200 that I offered and, in the end, I was forced to shell out Rs 500,” said G Srinivas while he waited outside the post-operative ward at Petlaburj.

Woman impregnated with wrong embryos, gives birth

Medical science has promised a lot of people in need of help; for childless couples, the prospect of being able to have children through in-vitro fertilization or through the help of a surrogate mother is a huge deal. However, once in a while, there are errors that happen. In this case, a couple was implanted with their embryo by a fertility clinic through in vitro fertilization, and was then informed that they had been implanted with the wrong embryo (a news that would have been horrifying to the couple, who were hoping to get a child through this technique). The couple finally decided that they would give the baby after birth to the natural parents, and, now the woman has finally given birth, and they are going to carry out this promise (link to article):

The couple said a fertility clinic implanted another couple's embryo into Carolyn Savage's uterus -- in essence, she became an unwitting surrogate for another family. Ten days after the procedure in February, they received a call from the clinic's doctor: "Carolyn is pregnant, but we transferred the wrong embryos."
They met with the baby's genetic parents and the DNA-related mother of the child came along for one doctor's appointment. In their statement after the birth, the Savage family congratulated the biological parents of the baby.

Such a decision requires a huge deal of courage and selflessness, and it is great to see that the couple have decided to go ahead with this decision.

13 year old Dutch girl wants to sail around the world

The craze to create records can make people do all sorts of things. But the expectation is that parents are there to control and guide the lives of children until they are capable of making their own decision. However, this does not always seem the case.
If you consider the art of sailing, it seems all fun and pleasure, out on the blue waters, under a nice sun, enjoying. However, if you consider a much longer journey, then not everything is such smooth sailing; you have storms, harsh weather, hot burning sun, engines break, and so on. Hardly something a 13 year old girl can manage alone, and yet her parents are fine with her attempting this. It took a court to bring some sense into this issue (link to article):

A Dutch court intervened Friday to stop a 13-year-old girl from attempting to sail around the world by herself, stripping her parents of sole custody. Laura Dekker's parents support her round-the-world ambition, which sparked concern from child protection officials because of her age. They took the case to court to prevent the solo trip.
Social workers took the action to stop the teen from attempting to become the youngest person to circumnavigate the globe because they believe the voyage would be too dangerous. "It's really more a question, is that person, that young person, mature enough to be able to look after themselves and deal with everything that's going to come at you when you get out alone at sea?" he said.

Seems more like an attempt to make a name for a person, or else a strong wish, not founded on more logical thinking, in some quarters, this could be called a 'death wish'.

Man faces charges after biting out his son's eyes

A father (or mother) is very important in the life of a child, they are the one who protect their children till the children themselves become adults, and in addition, it would seem impossible to find a parent who can cause their children harm. So what do you say to this boy whose father, in a drug induced frenzy, bit the eye of his 4 year old son, as a result of which the boy may become blind (link to article):

Bakersfield police say 34-year-old Angel Vidal Mendoza appeared to be under the influence of the drug PCP when he attacked the boy April 28, The Bakersfield Californian newspaper reported. Afterwards police say Mendoza rolled his wheelchair outside and began hacking at his own legs with an axe.

Imagine being so much under the influence of drugs that you can no longer recognize what is good and bad.

Girl forced to choose between parents and country

In a reflection of how law does not take into account human factors, or emotions, a teenage girl was placed in the horrendous position of having to choose between the country where she was born, and her parents (whom she may not be able to physically meet for 5 more years). In a case in Japan, a girl (Noriko Calderon), born to illegal immigrants, was given a choice of staying on in Japan, or returning on with her parents who were getting deported back to the Philippines. Her parents, Filipinos Arlan and Sarah Calderon, were illegal immigrants to Japan in the early 1990's, who then married in Japan and settled down there, and Noriko was born in Japan, and lived there for all of her young life. She is for all purposes a Japanese citizen (but not legally so, being granted a one year visa that will need to be extended annually), speaking only Japanese, and getting educated in Japan's schooling system.
However, her life (and that of her parents) was totally turned upside down one day in 2006 when Noriko's mother (Sarah Calderon) was arrested by authorities and accused of being an illegal immigrant. Her parents fought the legal battle till the end, but Japan is very strict about immigration controls and Noriko's parents lost in the end, finally being deported. And the decision for Noriko was hers to take (stay or go with her parents) (link to article):

Arlan found a stable job working for a construction company. Noriko grew up Japanese, attending school and never learning her parents' native language. Noriko, like many Tokyo girls her age, loves hip-hop and hopes to be a dancer or a teacher at a dance school someday. But her future in the only country she's ever known went into limbo when Japanese immigration authorities arrested her mother in 2006.
Japan's Immigration Bureau in a statement to CNN said the couple's illegal presence in the country as an "extremely malicious" violation that "shakes the foundation of Japan's immigration control." But when it came to 13 year old Noriko, the government gave the girl a choice: Her country or her parents. "Japan is my homeland," says Noriko, when asked why she is choosing to stay behind. She will move in with an aunt, allowed to stay in Japan under a visa that the government will reassess yearly. Her life, say her parents, will be better in Japan. She'll have schooling and the dreams a big city like Tokyo can offer her, versus the impoverished farm community her parents will move back to in the Philippines.

However heart-breaking the story, this is not a story that happens rarely. Such scenes are repeated in Japan and many other countries on a regular basis. Some countries are more liberal, allowing people to see a path for becoming citizens when they have been in the country for a long time; in other cases, it is equally traumatic when the child gets automatic citizenship due to having been born there, while the parents get no such benefit and are deported back to their original countries.
One slight twist happens in some such cases when the families do not retain any papers of their original country's citizenship, and their original country refuses to take them, asking for proof that these people were indeed their citizens in the first place.

Woman leaves mother covered with cats (to keep warm)

As people get older, they need more care. In winter, having adequate facilities and heating is an important part of that need. So what do you think about a lady who took her 84 year old mother out of a nursing home, and put her in a home alone where there was no one to take care of her, where the toilet facilities were not working, where there were a huge number of animals and the old lady was depending on the heat from the huge number of cats to keep warm:

NEW SMYRNA BEACH, Fla. -- About 50 cats, 20 ducks and 15 turkeys were taken from a New Smyrna Beach home, and a woman was arrested after her 84-year-old mother told authorities that she kept warm by covering herself with the animals, according to Volusia County sheriff's deputies. Mary Bosket, 54, was arrested on a charge of neglect to the elderly after her mother was found on Thanksgiving Day at the Glencoe Road home, which was in deplorable conditions and did not have a working heater, deputies said.
In one of the bedrooms, the deputy said he found caged turkeys, although one was wandering freely around the room. In another bedroom, ducks were found, along with an empty kid's swimming pool. A dog was in a third bedroom, where its feces had piled up, according to the Volusia County Sheriff's Office. Several geese, ducks and chickens were found in the back yard, deputies said. The only toilet in the home did not work and the sinks would not drain water, deputies said.

The lady could not answer questions as to why she had taken her mother out of the nursing home, and kept her this way, and was eventually arrested. It was good that deputies found the old lady, else there was a good chance that she could have died.

Romania allows 11 year old girl to have an abortion

Imagine the moral dilemma. An 11 year old girl, one who is so young and expected to lead a life where school, friends and games are the main ingredients of life, is struggling with the concept of bearing a life - being pregnant due to being raped by somebody known to her - her 19 year old uncle who is now on the run. Romania is a country that does not allow abortion after 14 weeks, but what do you in such a case where the girl is 21 weeks pregnant, but does not even know. Allowing the victim to give birth will essentially ruin her life, changing her life totally (and as can be seen, she was already being seen as different from her friends who were avoiding her), further, for an 11 year old, carrying a pregnancy to full term can be dangerous. Thankfully the Government relented:

BUCHAREST: The Romanian government has allowed an 11-year-old pregnant girl to undergo an abortion on exceptional grounds. The country had been divided in its opinion on the case of the 11-year-old who been raped by her uncle. On Thursday, 20 anti-abortion Orthodox groups had called for her to continue with her pregnancy offering to raise the child.
The girl is 21 weeks pregnant, more than the 14-week limit allowed by Romanian law. Abortions can be carried out later than 14 weeks in Romania, but only to save the life of the mother.

Thankfully, better sense prevailed, and the girl was allowed to terminate her pregnancy, no doubt offensive to pro-lifers, but something that should have been done.

Police find drunk mother has child at the wheel

Seems like a scary scenario; imagine the horror of police when they stop a car and find that the car is being driven by a drunk lady. Finding a drunk driver already is a bad offense because of the danger to other drivers on the road, as well as to the person driving the road. And when this happens in the case of lady who already has a suspended license because of a prior drunk driving offense, it gets even more worrisome. And to compound matters, there is a 1 year kid sitting on the mother's lap and steering with the other children in the back of the car:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A patrol officer stopped a car for suspicious driving and found to his surprise that a drunk mother had let her one-year-old son take the wheel, the Ohio state police department said Thursday. Marya Green, 29, of Goshen Township, near Cincinnati, was arrested late Tuesday and found to have a 0.11 percent blood alcohol level -- well above the 0.08 percent legal limit.
Green had put her infant son behind the steering wheel, while two other children aged eight and five were also traveling in the car, she added.

This was very dangerous, given that in the case of any impact, the infant would have taken the impact of the steering wheel, with the lives of the other children in the car also at risk.

California man on trial for torture of family

In the recent past, due to the 2 incidents where fathers have kept their daughters under duress and even had forcible incest with them (leading to the birth of children), it is not surprising any more to read stories where fathers have mistreated their families; but it still causes some distress to read about such painful incidents. Take this case in California (yep, you read it right, California) where a father mistreated his 19 children, including stories of torture and starvation over a period of years. He even managed to manipulate his children to mislead social workers when they came to investigate (although it would seem that the social workers accepted everything at face value):

MURRIETA, Calif. - For weeks, the three wives of Mansa Musa Muhummed and most of their 19 children have been telling a jury countless stories of torture and starvation that they kept to themselves for years. Muhummed sat in a desert courthouse with a hand over his face, shaking his head in denial as family members described being beaten, strung up by their feet and forced to eat vomit and feces.
The trial delays may have hurt his case because his children — once reluctant to talk to authorities — are now telling strangers of extreme deprivation, physical abuse and starvation. Standing just 4-foot-6 and weighing about 98 pounds, Sharon Boddie, 27, told jurors last week that she had grown and gained weight since her father was arrested nine years ago and the children were sent to foster or group homes.
But she still has scars from beatings and burns. She said she was taken out of school in second grade because she kept running away and teachers no longer wanted her there because she stole other children's lunches. "I'd go like a week without eating, not even water," she said in a flat, unemotional voice. She said she would be beaten when she tried to steal food from the refrigerator.

Such incidents are a blot on the concept of a civilized world, and it is shocking that such things can happen in a country as advanced as the United States.

Couple puts 7 day old baby girl for sale on the internet

This is the second time this year that such a thing has been reported. The internet, especially classified sales lists such as Craiglist have been used by people to sell all sorts of things, essentially as a online flea market. But no one can expect such lists to be used to sell human babies; in this case, a couple battling drug problems put in a young baby girl for sale on the internet. They were only caught when another woman saw the listing and reported it to authorities:

A couple put their seven-day-old baby girl up for sale for USD 10,000 over the Internet, Canadian police has said. The baby was seized by social workers in an apartment in this Pacific coast city while the parents, who have a history of drug problems, are under investigation for human trafficking, said police Constable Tim Fanning, just days after a similar incident in Germany.
The ad read "Must have!!!!!!" and offered a baby girl for 10,000 dollars. It described the child as seven days old, "very healthy and very cute. Can't afford and unexpected, looking for a good home, please call ASAP."

For no fault of hers, this baby has parents who are looking to sell their baby. Even considering that this is a hoax and a prank, it is very difficult to convince people that parents of a 7 day old baby could go so far as to think about putting their baby for sale on the internet (this is certainly not humour).