I guess it shouldn't be a suprise, but I shudder every time I see a story like this.
NORWALK, Ohio (AP) -- A boy whose parents are accused of making their special-needs adopted children sleep in cages testified Thursday that the couple forced him to live in the bathroom as punishment for bed wetting... The Gravelles are trying to regain custody of the 11 children, ages 1 to 15, who have problems such as fetal alcohol syndrome, HIV and a disorder in which children eat dirt.
Now, the story goes on to detail the abuses Sharen and Michael Gravelle are alleged to have done to their foster children. But there is very little else detailed about this family. But one minor detail did slip through, or was perhaps included by a savy reporter...
Source of the story is
CNN: Children in Cages.
In this, and other media reports of this story, no ages, racial or other details are noted [kind of odd, actually, given the media's obsession with matters of race and class...] In a fact-based world, these details should not really matter - the focus should be on the kids that survived this treatment. But our media does not live in the fact-based world, but in the emotional drama-land of "If it bleeds, it leads..." So the absence of basic info about the family seems somewhat out of place.
We are given this little tidbit:
"I couldn't come out of my room until I wrote the whole book of Deuteronomy," he said. "I was up there for like a month."
This means more than it might seem at face value. For those who may not know, Deuteronomy is the book of the Christian Old Testament that outlines "God's Laws" of social and moral behavior. It contains such gems as:
Deuteronomy 22:13-21
If a man takes a wife and, after lying with her(says)... "I married this woman, but when I approached her, I did not find proof of her virginity," then the girl's father and mother shall bring proof that she was a virgin to the town elders at the gate. ... if no proof of the girl's virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father's house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.
And this classic:
Deuteronomy 21:18-21
"If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, who hearkeneth not to the voice of his mother, and they chastise him, and he will not hearken unto them; then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him and bring him out unto the elders of his city...and all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die; and thou shalt put away the evil from the midst of thee; and all Israel shall hear, and be afraid."
These are the kind of things that James Dobson and his ilk cite as justifications for the 'child discipline' policies they espouse, which Dobson's book Dare to Discipline oultines, where the good Doctor talks about pain as a "marvelous attention-getter" and says kids have to scream in order to show that they have gotten the message.
Is there any question about how the media would be reporting this story if the kid was told to copy verses out of the Koran? Or if the parents were perhaps listening to 'satanic' Heavy Metal music?
Saddest of all is the long-term impact this type of "Family Values"-based treatment must have on these poor kids, who are already struggling against mental and physical illness:
The boy said he has grown tired of his box, but was ambivalent when asked whether he preferred being with the Gravelles or in a foster home.
"It doesn't matter," he said. "There's no sense getting comfortable at any place."