Mother who caged teen gets 20 years behind bars

Mentally ill mom. Sad.

How can prison not be the right option? She kept them in cages, seems just she should end up in one herself. And when does anyone know that someone does not pose a threat to society? Everyone can pose a threat, it's just a matter of if they act on their thoughts.

I've seen way too many faces with that very same look in their eyes these past few years. Disturbing.

unbelievable.

does shit like this happen in other countries?

How can you say that someone who treated a human worse than some treat animals is not a threat to society? That is not a stable mind therefore you cannot make assumptions based on opinion.

stephenthomson,
yes...does Josef Fritzl ring a bell?

I dont know what is going on with people, but more and more in the news you see this story or parent killing there children. Back in March there was already a count of i believe it was like 54 children that had died by there parents hands, and that was what was reported nationally. And what is even more disturbing is that this woman was able to ADOPT these kids. Way to go Child PROTECTIVE Services, way to really protect those kids.

As for her, I say fry her ass after you leave her locked up in a cage starving, (she certainly doesn't look like she has missed any meals), people who abuse children deserve the death penalty!

I agree, there's no way to describe how scared you are for the kids who are depending on our "great" government to bring them a happy life and may end up in a place like this houselhold-from-Hell.

Josef Fritzi rings a bell now that I googled him.

well that's a relief... mentally disturbed abusive parents aren't unique to the USA. I was beginning to think maybe it was something in our tofu.

Indeed, mentally disturbed parents/ guardians have been around for for thousands and thousands of years...but bottom-feeding journalists haven't!

Go media.
Way to turn yet another rotten peanut into an epic pile of elephant poo.

And yes, it is absolutely monstrous, what was done to those kids.
I also feel sorry for the mother. Not only is she mentally disturbed; her husband just died, and she's going to jail for 20 years.
etosha - really? Torture and execution? Personal attacks to boot?
I can think of quite a few crimes against children that would warrant that treatment, but this isn't one of them, as nasty as it is (from what the article says).
I'd bet money she's mentally unbalanced.

This is seriously whats high on currents news charts? This is stuff for local news at 10. I would rather want to read about flowers and lions and tigers. oh...my.

and they say gays aren't fit to adopt..gtfo

So much for investigations. Keeshii is right on target. I think Gays out to be allowed to adopt. Being gay does not mean you couldn't be a better parent than some of these straight people. I'd damn sure rather see children in a loving gay home than in foster care for their entire childhood.

Make her live in a cage! Oh wait shes going to prison.

all i can say is WOW

Why the hell would somebody do that? Somebody had to know she was treating her children like that and somebody should of spoke up a lot sooner. Just like that man in eastern Europe, I found it really funny that that wife did not go in the basement for over 20 fricken years!

The women is an animal. I think what this article meant to say was that prison is not bad enough. What drives a person to lock up children in a cage?

remember Jim Carey as the grinch - she sorta looks like him in that movie - and she sorta looks like the cowardly loin in the wizard of oz - she's fugly , whatever she is .

That lady has a devil in her. Look in her eyes.

Some looneys get this natural high from torturing people. You can call them sick, but to themselves, they are just feeding their habit. This lady is so mentally ill!

Good decision.

Mentally impaired people do not pose a threat to the society in general. Prison is not the answer to healing her wrong-doing. Maybe being tossed into a psychiatric hospital would do her good, but prison would only be a threat to making her more mentally unstable.

I agree! How did the follow up for this adoption fail so badly? I hope this prompts a further investigation.

"mentally impaired" is , of course , a vague thing . this woman is , in fact , a criminal - and if "criminals" aren't "mentally impaired" then who is ?

Only twenty years?
Psh.
She deserves life.

Ruining a child's life can be paid for in such a short time, and life can barely compensate for it.

Miserable ugly bitch

I can only imagine the horror that story strikes in the heart of a woman who gave a child up for adoption, hoping for a better life for him..

It would be interesting to know more about her childhood. Monsters are made, not born. A huge percentage of prisoners are mentally unstable, it's so sad. We got rid of the 'asylums' and just built more prisons.

This creature has no right to live among humans.Put it in its own cage and provide the boy an unlimited supply of sharpened sticks,or just execute it.

People like her deserve to be shot.

Hammurabi code I say.
You lock them up, they lock you up plus a free kick in the vagina.

I say the true criminals in this case are the state and the social workers. I have a sister who is a social worker and it makes me sick to hear the comments she (my sister) is told by her superiors when she brings up abuse or neglect. Most of the time they tell her if she is so concerned to go and see the children on her own time or call the police. Most of the times the police tell her she needs to speak to her supervisors about the situation.

It took how long for the state to finally come in and take the boy away? 10 yrs? No check ups in between? Oh, they also let them take in other children? Why didn't they check on the first kid before they gave them the authorization to take the others?

And of course the state was gonna make sure that he was entered into a top notch physical and mental therapy clinic and ensure he ate and gained weight once he was back in their custody. It was because of them he was in that situation in the first place.

You guys can harp on the injustices these folks perpetrated on these children, but the real criminals are the state and social workers who continue to use the excuse that they don't have the time or the money to make sure that these kids go to good homes. Fact is there aren't really any good homes that want these type of disabled children. And even if the state gave these people (the Sullivans) money to foster these children, do any of you know how much a good child psychologist and physical therapy clinic cost? I do, it's a hell of alot more than $600/month, in fact caring for a completely healthy kid is hard with only $600/month.

It's so easy for us to sit back and judge, we aren't in the situation. We don't know all the facts, and anyone who thinks the state would let all the facts be spoken about in court and be held liable are delusional. You obviously are still under the impression that this government actually cares about the welfare of poor or disadvantaged people.

The state is directly responsible, in my opinion, for placing a child with disabilities in a home in which the foster parents had no training or knowledge of how to properly care for this child. Perhaps the state didn't want to have to fork over the costs or resources of having to take care of this child themselves. They (the state) rarely do when it comes to unwanted disadvantaged kids.

Wake up and smell the fucking corruption. You guys are getting caught up in the scapegoat (the Sullivans) the state has offered up as a distraction to the real problems plaguing disadvantaged children who are given up by their birth parents because they can't deal with them themselves. The real problem being the system set up to "protect" them.

And she's probably heavyset for the same reason most Americans are heavyset. They eat their problems away. Like none of you have someone in your family that is overweight. If they had a skinny child would you like for people to imply they are starving their children to fatten themselves up (I realize the child taken was severely emaciated, but I'm just offering an example)?

Like I said before, we don't know all the facts, and we certainly don't know what it is like to raise a child that is mentally disabled. And anyone who does and wants to be honest can tell me if they ever did something to that child they weren't proud of because they felt like they had no other choice at the time or were at their wit's end.

I'm in no way defending these people (they should have forced the state to take back these kids and shouldn't have made the situation worse by thinking they could continue this treatment and it would be okay). I'm simply being objective and trying to look at the situation for what it was, a big fucking mess. And not due entirely to the Sullivans.

Thank you Mafioso.
I hadn't given much thought to the role of the social workers, mostly because I didn't know much about how they work.

I was also pretty shocked by the amount of venom in many of these posts, with such a short article to go on...

She likes cages, right??? She should live in one for a the rest of her life. She is not sad, she is criminal.Looks like she didn't starve herself!

Whoa!! Yet another nut case coming out of the closet I see? To me it all boils down to this, that a mother in some instances will do almost anything when they are taken to and past thier extremes. But this lady, this story, this piece beats out almost anything I've ever heard before in this news.

"Sullivan told a judge at the time that Ohio authorities told her to keep the boy, who had severe medical and emotional problems, in a crib."

And the article which is really too short to get much out of it states that he was in "what appeared to be" a cage. It is reprehensible that a child would be treated this way. However, where were the state authorities all of this time? If they did indeed tell her to keep this boy and to keep him in a crib, why weren't they checking up on him? If he indeed had severe medical and emotional problems, again, where were the authorities? Didn't these people have any other family? This story the way it is written is really so devoid of facts... I would like to know more about her own mental state and why authorities seemed to have dropped the ball on these children as well. Hopefully they will not now be pushed back into this system to be abused again.

She should be put in a cage and only fed once a day.