Wisconsin parents charged with starving, abusing 5-year-old

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press


Updated 4:37 pm, Tuesday, July 11, 2017'






GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A northeastern Wisconsin husband and wife starved and abused their adopted 5-year-old son and accused him of manipulating a trip to the hospital so he could "vacation" there, according to criminal complaints.

Criminal complaints against Bradley Fahrenkrug, 40, and Kimberly Fahrenkrug, 38, of Wrightstown, say the boy weighed just 29 pounds and was suffering from severe malnutrition when he was admitted to Children's Hospital in Madison in April. The complaints say the couple's other children told investigators their parents made the 5-year-old wear a helmet, a compression vest, flippers and a backpack filled with weights and ordered him to march and do other exercises.
 
The Fahrenkrugs say the helmet protected the boy from banging his head and that the other gear helped him strengthen his legs.
 
He was given only a small amount of food to eat while his siblings could eat as they pleased, prosecutors said. The parents denied withholding food from their son and told investigators the boy had stopped eating.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/Parents-charged-with-starving-abusing-5-year-old-11280251.php#photo-13220385

[pnwmom]

1. Regardless of whatever else happens, I hope they permanently lose custody

of all of their children.

[atreides1]

2. Religious belief!!!

I bet that's going to be their defense!!!

[SunSeeker]

3. That poor kid. Put those "parents" in jail and throw away the key!

That was nothing short of torture and attempted murder.

[alphafemale]

4. And so many arms hunger to hold and cherish a child.

I hope the innocent children in this story find safe places to heal.

And I hope those sorry wastes of skin sacs that tortured these children never have a free day again.

And yes, they tortured all the children. It is mental and emotional torture to witness such a thing and know you are powerless...and that you can be Next.

[politicat]

5. Adoptive. My money is on that being the operative word.

Not all adoptive parents, stipulated.

Now, let's move on to the religious adoptive agencies and how they encourage abuse of children, because they want repeat business. When a pair comes in to adopt, the religious agencies provide follow up therapy, which more often than not means the adoptive child is diagnosed by non-professionals as having "Reactive Attachment Disorder" when the adjustment to their new home is more difficult than it was with a newborn. The so called therapy for this is essentially breaking the child's will through practices that fall under the Geneva Convention's torture rules: RAD-diagnosed children lose all possessions and privileges, are sleep and food deprived and/or physically tortured. To be clear: children adopted through public agencies and the foster system get RAD diagnoses at a tenth the rate of children placed through religious agencies, despite the kids in the public system usually experiencing far worse situations before placement. The legitimate psych community does recognize reactive attachment disorder, but it is extremely rare.

Then there's the contracts religious agencies use -- they often require physical punishment, to raise children in a religious environment. Some require participation in certain churches, or to homeschool.

The religious agencies will never, ever tell the adoptive parents that their expectations are unrealistic, that the parents' behavior is unacceptable, that the parents are being unreasonable. They can't afford to do that, because the child doesn't write the checks and the agencies want more $10K checks. Instead, they tell the parents that they are good, generous, laudable, doing everything right, and the child is broken. The child must be the problem, and must be disciplined until the child is appropriately grateful, submissive, and never disagreeable. The child should be grateful because they weren't aborted, and any child who doesn't comply with this -- even if the child is too young to understand -- is evil.

The child is usually not broken. The child is dealing with separation trauma, is in a new environment, is overwhelmed and frightened, and has no means of articulating their anxiety and fear. The child is also a child, and thus prone to finicky eating, boundary testing, meltdowns and all of the other normal behaviors of small children. But the agencies tell the parents that adoption is easy. It's not. It's no easier than parenting any child.

The agency and any of their religious therapists or pseudotherapists need to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, alongside these parents.

[musette_sf]

6. THIS +1 x infinity