Happy face, happy heart
A picture is worth a thousand words, and every one of those words is true.
You can see happiness in someone’s eyes, in their smile.
If they look happy, they are happy.
If they look loving, they are loving. Their love shines out from their faces. There’s no repressing it.
Pictures don’t lie. Happy face, happy heart.
Mouse over the photos for the happy children’s stories.
Or if mousing doesn’t work…
[Trigger warnings for child abuse.]
Until the age of three, Marcus Fiesel lived with his mother and her boyfriend in a flea-infested, reeking household, severely neglected and beaten. He was removed to a foster home. His foster parents wanted to go to a family reunion without the hyperactive little boy, so they bound him in a blanket with packing tape and left him in a closet without food and water for the day. The temperature in the closet exceeded 105 degrees. When his foster parents found him dead, they incinerated his body and tried to claim he went missing at the park.
When this picture was taken, Nubia Barahona had already lived for several years with her adoptive parents. They bound her and her twin brother, Viktor, and made them stand for hours upon hours in the bathtub, untying their hands only to let them eat. When family members came over, Nubia’s father, Jorge Barahona, forced Nubia and Viktor to strip naked and walk around in front of everybody, and forced everyone to watch.
When Nubia was 10–so, not long after this photo was taken–Jorge beat Nubia to death. He put her body in a plastic bag, put the bag in the back of the truck, and drove to a remote location with Viktor. Then he poured acid over Viktor and waited for the burns and the fumes to kill both Viktor and himself. Both survived.
Not long after this photo was taken, two-year-old Riley Ann Sawyer’s mother and stepfather beat her with leather belts and held her head under the water. Her stepfather threw Riley Ann across the room by her hair, causing her head to slam into the tile floor. After that, she lost control of her legs. As the beating continued, Riley Ann tried to make it stop by telling her mother, “I love you.” It didn’t work.
She died that night.
Her mother claimed it was just a case of discipline that went too far.
Marie-Thérèse Kouao cut, burned, starved, and neglected her niece, Victoria Climbié, from the time Victoria came into her care. She tied the girl up for longer than 24 hours at a time, hit her with hammers and bike chains, and poured boiling water on her. Kouao’s boyfriend, Carl Manning, beat, punched, and sexually assaulted the little girl. When hospitals began to suspect abuse, Kouao stopped taking Victoria to hospitals and started taking her to churches instead. Victoria died of multiple organ failure and malnutrition on February 25, 2000. The medical examiner found 128 separate wounds on her body.
A few months after this picture was taken, Ben Butler murdered his 5-year-old daughter Ellie, top. Her wounds were so severe the medical examiner likened her to a car crash victim. This photo was taken to celebrate Ben Butler’s getting custody of his two daughters after losing custody of them for most of their lives on suspicion of child abuse.
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What is it about vile, abusive people that draws them into being foster or adoptive parenting, or into relationships with people with children? In fact, what is wrong with abusive people who decide that they should have children?
My mother decided that my parents should take in foster children, and she would tell me stories like these to show me “what real abuse is” using my foster siblings and her childhood as examples. Of course she still believed in “corporal punishment” but that was different from “beatings” and if she was busy and forgot to feed us lunch because we were running errands all afternoon, well, she was just being a good mom and doing errands, and if we got cranky or upset or angry and started arguing until she decided that we didn’t “deserve” lunch, that’s different from really “starving” your children. She frequently didn’t have enough food growing up, a bunch of 6 year-olds can manage to skip a meal here and there, right?
I think it has to do with abusive people being attracted to victims who have no real recourse or party to stand up for them. Think about it, if you’re someone who serial abuses people you’re going to get good at finding vulnerable targets or you won’t last very long. I think that’s a huge reason abusers go after foster kids, steps kids, and their own children.
Nice to see you posting again.
But you should probably pixellate the face of the blonde child in the last picture (sister of Ellie Butler), as she is still alive (presumably under a new identity) and no identifying details of her are allowed to be revealed in the UK, presumably to give her at least some chance of growing up without everybody knowing who she is.
…feel like I’m going to be sick.
This kills me. They’re all smiling but their eyes are so sad.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2018/01/starvation-chains-and-the-picture-perfect-homeschool-family.html
More “happy family” portraits for the collection. Bonus FB comments on how “well-behaved” the terrorized children are in public.
While perusing another Estranged Parents site, I came across another poster who had 11 children whom she homeschooled. And 9 (that’s right NINE) of those 11 ungrateful little brats escaped as soon as they were of legal age and the other two are still underaged-but the poster suspects they will bolt ASAP.
She gives no details on why she expects the remaining two to estrange-but all of them are simply defective ungrateful brats after all she did for them-including homeschooling them! Do you know how Speshall that makes her?! There’s no mention of a father(s), and not the slightest indication of how obviously BSC this bitch is in her full on rage blast on her kids-without a scintilla of self-awareness. Of course, no one at that site even bothers to follow up with just the facts she related or question her parenting. Besides, “they do it because they can” is oh so convenient when it’s obvious the AC’s Estrange because of a pattern of abuse and neglect perpetrated by the poster over decades. These abusive parents are so sure their children failed to “kid” correctly. I bet “every Christmas card showed a perfect family” with this Speshall Snowflake playing Madonna and Child in the center of the litter.
Bottom line: All abusers isolate their victims.
Often times the child accuses the parent of something they did not do. The father was not present in their life and being a single parent is a hard job. My daughter doesn’t want nothing to do with me. She can forgive me, but she doesn’t trust me. In other words, I will never be a grandmother and get to babysit. It will never be a happy situation.
“Often times?” Cite your sources. “The father was not present in their life..” which say a whole lot about who and what kind of person you chose to spread your legs for and that is entirely a reflection on you and your own shitty choices: Own them. Unless you were a widow-and I’m sure you would have played that card if it were available or you had conjured it up-this is Reality. Did you expect to get extra Gold Stars in your Mommy Crown because “being a single parent is a hard job?” Well no shit, Sherlock. So was I and so are many others truly through no fault of their own. I was widowed at 38. That doesn’t give me any exemption or Speshall Snowflake status when it involves my responsibility to be a conscientious parent to my children. Being a parent is a hard job period and this is the path you chose entirely of your own volition. No extra credit Mommy Stars for being a parent-it’s your JOB, you chose it, your screws ups are your own, not your daughter’s.
“…doesn’t want nothing to do with me.” Grammar Check is free and your friend; your daughter is neither. Most importantly, neither is she some vehicle to fulfill your own dreams and fantasies. If your Life Goal is to play grandma and babysit, volunteer at a daycare or an orphanage-if you can pass a background investigation. Any children your daughter has are her responsibility. One would certainly hope she makes better choices than you did and that’s about as good an outcome as can be reasonably expected. That you destroyed this child’s inherent trust in you speaks to a consistent pattern of betrayal on your part towards your child-and you STILL don’t believe her. No wonder she won’t let you near her own children. Of course it will “never be a happy situation” because you are so vested in your narrative that your daughter is a liar and pointing at her as the problem when the reality is, YOU are the genesis of your own choices and results; however, your daughter was the powerless recipient of those choices and results as well. That’s on you. The reality is we all do dumb, irresponsible etc. stuff. Where the true conflict arises is when we frantically, non-productively try to dodge and weave the results of those choices. (Yeah, OUCH, how well I know.) Failing at some endeavor doesn’t mean we are a failure at everything including as a human being. How else do we learn?
Your entire comment reflects the reality Abusive, Neglectful and other genre of perpetrators never see themselves as such. In a few sentences you have denied, obfuscated, engaged in Distraction and Diversion, blamed shifted, self-pitied and remain mired in your Professional Victimhood: She’s a liar, you’re a victim of men, of life, “it’s hard” for you (oh FFS, welcome to Reality) and your daughter is denying you for some unfathomable reason-well, she’s allegedly a liar, there’s that-your entirely facetious right to a do-over mommy-hood under the guise of “never get to be a grandmother or babysit.”
Your daughter is fulfilling her most fundamental task as a parent: The protection of her children from all threats, known and those to be yet determined. Sounds like she’s doing a great job. I would expect to see my adult offspring engaging in at least this bare bones minimum of parenting responsibility. *That’s a POSITIVE, not a negative.* In theory you agree with that-“for thee but not for me” eh?!
Look, I’m not insensate to the challenges of parenting, single or otherwise. I do get it. I also understand the tremendous emotional and psychological effort and energy it requires to hold a painful, threatening Reality at bay: We’re human and we’re just built that way. It is, however, transparently ridiculous and contradictory to state your daughter has accused you of some unspecified wrong doing yet she “forgives” you: What’s to forgive if she’s lying? She’s not lying and you know that and it hurts like hell so you’re hiding behind a bunch of defense mechanisms that are not serving you-or her-well. You’re at an impasse.
Your daughter-none of our children-are responsible for fulfilling OUR dreams, ambitions, goals etc. including being a grandma. And I bet if I were to talk to her she’d tell me you don’t see or treat her as a unique human being in her own right, not an extension of you and your agenda. I KNOW you didn’t do this intentionally, but you did-and look no further than your belief she is denying you some role in the lives of her children that YOU want, expect and believe you’re entitled to-and you’re NOT. Your entire Belief System suffers from your lack of self-awareness, genuine self examination and reality testing.
When we have spent decades actively parenting our kids, our Parent label becomes an ingrained part of our Identity. When they become adults and strike out on their own, we as parents need to do some heavy lifting: Who are we now? We all had an Identity that included interests, passions, talents etc. before they came along that had absolutely nothing to do with them. It is up to each of us as adults whose kids have flown the nest to dust off our Identity and find out who we are NOW, not to cut their flight wings or burden them with our own expectations or wants. Kabeesch?!
I have more far more hope for you and your daughter than you do. Re-establishing Trust with your daughter whom you c
love *and who loves you* isn’t an Insta-Pot endeavor. Give yourself the opportunity of getting to know who you are NOW as an also unique human being in your own right. You have talents, abilities and lovely qualities of your own, apart from any other human being. You have inherent worth and dignity by virtue of being human: YOU MATTER.
I’m old now-not wise, just experienced. Hubris has bitch slapped me back to reality-and will continue to do so-if I start to believe my adult kids/grands/great-grands are here to fulfill ME. There is one fundamental Life Lesson I’ve done battle with and consistently been (rightfully) defeated: Love of any kind is not about possession but renunciation. It requires I relinquish what I want, need, desire, dream etc. for my loved one *who also has the same for their own life.* They are the Authors of their lives. Once I get my ego out of the way, I am stunned by their beauty and greatness. Their canvas is their’s alone. I can only marvel at the results-for better or worse. And this same intangible gift is available to you. Love is not finite, ma’am. Most importantly, it has neither demands nor parameters. It is only when we insist on our own way, when we attempt to force our own template over it’s beauty that it shrivels and dies.
Indeed, that is “never a happy situation.”
I believe this once and for all denies the excuse that abusive people have that “if they weren’t complaining then I can have done anything wrong”. Abusing people who then don’t look or act like they’re being abused, or who don’t challenge it because they are too young/disabled/powerless is still abuse.