Couple hide 5 children from society in PA. No birth certs, immunizations or school records

[Liberal_in_LA]

Couple faces charges of hiding 5 children from society
November 29, 2010|By the CNN Wire Staff

Louann Bowers and Sinhue Johnson, who are accused of endangering their five children, are due in court Friday.State authorities discovered five children in south central Pennsylvania huddled in a condemned house without heat, running water or anything that could reveal their identities.

The children -- ranging in age from 2 to 13 -- have no birth certificates, no record of immunizations and no school records, having been largely kept away from society for several years, York County police Lt. Tim Utley said.

"You always have the occasion when people are living in poor conditions, but this was extreme," Utley said. "They're going to have to be assimilated into what's not considered normal for them."


The parents, Louann Bowers and Sinhue Johnson, were arrested over the summer, when the children were found.

They have been charged with five felony counts of child endangerment and are awaiting a court appearance Friday.

Case workers at York County Children and Youth Services learned about the children after receiving anonymous phone calls, Utley said.

The calls prompted workers to investigate the area; they alerted police after discovering the squalid conditions in which the children were living, he said.

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-11-29/justice/pennsylvania.children.found_1_case-workers-youth-services-charges?_s=PM:CRIME

[slackmaster]

1. They will be assimilated

Resistance is futile.

[Danger Mouse]

2. That's awful. I hope they can find a good, loving home for the kids.

[elocs]

3. Yeah, I read about that here on Sunday:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9646047

[howaboutme]

4. How sad for the kids. But why do those with the least sense

seem to have the most kids? Can someone explain how that works. Don't they know how kids are made? I've always been surprised that cons would not encourage abortion if only to minimize their welfare costs. I'm very familiar with York County and it generally is not an area where one would think that this could happen.

[slackmaster]

8. People of average intellect are actually the most "reproductively fit"

Which means simply that they have the most kids. That's why measures of intelligence tend to produce classic bell curves.

You know how dumb the average person is. Half of them are dumber than that.

[KoKo]

9. That's quite an elitist attitude you have there.....just posting it out there like you know all

without even a link to give some kind of evidence to your claim. Heartless...and beneath a DU poster to put something out there like this..... Who are you...where do you come from....why would you say such a thing with no credible evidence to support what you said. :shrug:

[howaboutme]

10. An opinion needed

Excuse my response but I kind of feel responsible in that I posed the original question and meant it as a serious question. I don't wish to sound as non-compassionate but we see this situation repeated way too common.

So what do you think is the reason why those with the least parenting sense (and obviously this couple has little parenting ability) and few resources to help them, often have the most kids. I see it regularly, and see it as an assured path to life long poverty and a sad outcome for the kids.

When it comes down to making kids it is all about 2 people.

[KoKo]

11. I don't know how old you are or your circumstances....but I grew up in Rural South

with some very deprived people who put "Coca Cola" in their baby bottles in place of milk. I left there but when I came back it seemed that the kids from that family and many others who grew up as "Kerosene Kids" (they smelled of kerosene on the school bus because their parents couldn't afford anything but old heaters...one in the "Front Room.") Many of those kids grew up in circumstances that were truly "hardscrabble" but not unlike what Pioneers went through in the century before where the kids had to live on what the parents could scrabble out. Many of those kids I grew up actually became College Graduates and many graduated from Baptist and Pentacostal affiliated colleges that would accept them and now are the Fundie Tea Partiers of the times we live in now. They managed to survive..... It's beyond me how they did it. Good Genes account for much in our lives. More than is probably still known and their parents took them to church and those churches took care of the families an kids in some way to get them through the hard times.


I don't know enough about this particular family (aside from the sensational news article) but....they sound very weird. That said, unless they are found to have been abusing the kids physically or sexually then maybe the kids will be alright even though they were isolated from what we all might call "normal" these days. I live in an area where my Fundie friends live in gorgeous houses but they "homeschool their kids" and don't want them to be involved in anything but Home, Sports and Church. These kids are priviledged with parents who both hold degrees from college. But, the parents don't like the Media and the Outside world to influence their kids. WEIRD TO ME....but it's what they choose. They only socialize with people like them who "homeschool" and go to "their own church." So, it's really hard to understand them for folks who are more open minded like me, except that they remind me of the kids I grew up with in the rural South of Decades Ago!

[howaboutme]

12. Ooops she just gave birth to number 6

http://www.ydr.com/crime/ci_16743090?source=rss_viewed

She just had #6.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I'm old enough to remember when families on farms sometimes had big families with the rationale that they would be a help when they grow up. In the 60s I believe there was opportunity than today. There were jobs available to high school grads that paid a decent wage. Today you need at minimum an associate degree to open doors to even a technical career with a chance of moving ahead. Otherwise it takes serious luck, help and initiative.

Today I have no idea why people like this couple have 6 kids where each child will require public help and probably lifelong support, and to be honest I really find it irritating because it was a matter of their choice.

[slackmaster]

14. The reason so many parents have little parenting sense, is that people have kids when they are young

Emotionally immature, lacking in life experience, often short on resources and overworked.

It doesn't take any brains or education or even basic common sense to produce a baby.

When it comes down to making kids it is all about 2 people.

Two people who too often aren't really thinking about the consequences of what they are doing.

[slackmaster]

13. Cut me some slack, for Pete's sake. I posted that from my cell phone last night.

Would it have killed you to politely ask me to post something to back up my statement without insulting me?

Here:



IQ is one way of measuring intelligence.

The reason the curve looks as it does, and stays that way, is that people at either end produce fewer children on average, than do people in the middle. In other words, people of normal intelligence tend to be the most reproductively fit. If intelligence was positively, linearly correlated with reproductive fitness, the graph would be a line sloping upward from left to right.

Feel free to look up any of the terms I've used if you either don't understand them, or if you still feel I'm trying to project some kind of message about me. My point in posting this factoid is that contrary to howaboutme's assertion, the dumbest people DO NOT produce the most children. People of average intelligence do.

100 IQ is considered "normal" intelligence. Similar curves appear if you substitute other measures of people, e.g. height.

[Gold Metal Flake]

5. Pennsylvania hates home-schoolers.

[Kennah]

6. What an inspiring story!

This represents the best of everything Republicans offer about the future for America.

A condemned house?

That's just God's wrath for trying to take advantage of those poor, unsuspecting bankers.

No heat?

Be happy, commie. No home heat means no global warming.

No running water?

You're hippies. You don't bath anyway.

No birth certificates?

No Fourteenth Amendment Soup for you!

No immunizations?

You can get health care in the ER.

No school records?

School records are part of the public education socialist plot.

Squalid conditions?

There's nothing like a boot on the throat of the poor to inspire them.

This has been a test of the Emergency Sarcastic Network.

[howaboutme]

7. There should be no doubt in our mind

that the USA is becoming a poorer nation, all while a select connected few get it all and while we still hand out foreign aid and defend well-off nations. You see too many examples of our decline. I look around and what were well kept neighborhoods are in a noticeable state of decline with some vacant houses.

Wealth begets wealth even if they outrageously gamble it away as Wall Street did and that resulted in major damage to society in general.

I surely don't have an answer but I blame it directly on a series of US Presidents (D&R) and a Congress that gave away our economy and jobs to China and Mexico in the name of "free trade". Without good jobs people can't get out of poverty and it takes the country down.

China's poverty is becoming US poverty and we must not ever forget that it was both Parties who had a hand in it.