And one wonders how
parricide moves beyond watching Greek tragedy. And what did their wedding cake look like?
A Virginia mother and father who pleaded guilty to felony child neglect after their three young kids were found locked in a cage will not serve any prison time.
According to a court summary, "there was a noticeable, pungent odor where the three children were in a family room behind a homemade gate. ... The gate had a lock on it and the key was hanging up on a wall."
Deputies said the 17-month-old boy and 3- and 4-year-old girls shared a mattress inside the cage, and were kept behind the gate day and night. Neely said the carpet had feces and urine stains on it. But, he said, the case did not meet the requirements for Virginia Supreme Court's child neglect law, and therefore did not merit prison time.
"While Suggs and Kangas weren't jailed, they have been put on indefinite supervised probation, ordered to pay $2,500 each and have been prohibited from having future contact with their children, who have been placed in a foster home. They also are undergoing drug treatment, Neely said.
Nobody knows that that's why. Kids get bruised on the heads all the time," Neely said. "The problem is the case law ... Unless we can show that the neglect was intentionally set about to cause physical harm or kill the children or was so gross and reckless, the courts repeatedly hold that just being a bad parent and keeping a nasty, dirty house is not enough to convict somebody of felony child neglect. It's got to be worse than that."
He added that the "cage" was "nothing more than a gate."