Obituary of Child Abuser, Written by The Abused Children, Pulled from Newspaper

eNumbra

LionOfGOD
The mother sounds like a monster.
If so, she deserves to have her name dragged through the mud.

So because they dragged her name through the mud, she deserves to have her name dragged through the mud?
You see what's wrong with this logic, yes?

No,
i´ll clarify;
If you´re a scumbag, you deserve to be remembered as such.

WhiteAlice
Destruction of that public persona for all time in a public manner via the obituary is, from my point of view, absolutely closure. I think it should be reinstated in the paper.

Considering your background with this type of situation, your opinion is of very high value. If it provides closure for the victims ... and in the process it may shame other abusers into stopping their actions ... then I'd say put the obituary back in the paper and let everyone see it.

Hushabye
reply to post by _BoneZ_

 

Nice strawman there, dude.

Let me as you, have you ever been through any type of abuse? really.. I am not talking about getting your ass beat because you did something stupid, I am talking about getting beat with a hammer and 2x4 because you lost your house key..(true story)

The thing with child abuse is when someone goes through it its like a broken record it gets stuck on a particular part of a track because well that is how things go.. Once you learn something its kinda hard to unlearn it.. Especially since it was beat into you...

JohnPhoenix
I'm glad they pulled it because

Children should respect their parents. Even if they are bad parents. The bible puts it like this Honor your mother and father. Yeah.. these kids are going to hell for this LOL.

There is no way in hell that I would ever respect my father for what he did to me and my siblings, that's like asking the jews to respect Hilter for doing what he did..

There is also the saying that one deserves the respect one gives.. and if this lady beat these kids for no reason there was at least enough respect for them to even acknowledge she died.. cause I will tell you what, when my dad dies that will just be another day for me... really I can give a rats ass less if he lived today or died today... I haven't seen him since I was 17(40 now) and I doubt I will see him before either one of is dies...

::EDIT::

Also John, to my recollection my father never spent any time in jail.. You see when you are brought up in a situation like this, Anything leaves this house you will pay dearly for it.. want an example?

12 yrs old, I had a b day was having a bad day anyway.. party b day cake i was lead in with my eyes closed and was sat down at the table... They sang happy b day to me and i blew out the candles, when the lights came on my dad noticed i wasn't smiling.. he stated "What the f*ck is your problem, f*ckin smile..." so i gave one of them whatever smiles, he took the cake smashed it in my face and i went back hit the sharp part of a counter and had a bad cut on the side of my head... Next day in school.. I was called to the principles office where 2 cops where there.. Guess what I say.... exactly I fell down the steps.. remember repeat anything and it will be worse than what you got..

::EDIT AGAIN!!::

bkaust
While I do see your point in regards to how some would act re: wills etc, I don't think suffering a mental illness is an excuse if she did in fact, abuse her children. If that was the case she should have given them up, rather than poison their existence.. Suffering from anger, anxiety, depression myself - there is no way on earth I would harm my daughter, if it was even a possibility, I would, or make my husband, remove me from the situation until help was sought. I have only met a couple of them, but there are just some people who should not be allowed to be given the gift of children, you can just tell they aren't right.

* this is all based on if it is true of course, I'm just assuming it is because I can't imagine all 6 remaining siblings making it up just because.

I just want to say you sound like me...

Tough call.

Okay, so what if the story is skewed, exaggerated, or spun? ... lets suppose that it isn't.

It is distasteful, no doubt. Airing the family's dirty laundry in an obituary seems kind of dramatic. Though, child abuse is far more from their perspective (the abused) it was probably warranted.

Generally speaking there doesn't seem to be a reason to have sympathy for child abusers, living or dead.

Seems like the best thing to do would have been to let it die with her, sans commentary. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Some testify that this is therapeutic for the abused. Perhaps that is true, but there's gotta be a better way. Pissing on her grave comes to mind. Literally rather than figuratively. Since we aren't above doing things in bad form...

The siblings felt the need to inform their community of child abuse. They also wanted the community to know about their mother specifically. As if to say, "In case you were wondering..."

Isn't this about censorship?
I guess I didn't realize that newspapers can censor a family written obit.
What about wedding announcements? Birth announcements? Classified ads?

I think the family has a right to say what they feel, instead of saying "beloved mother leaves grieving children" if that's not the case. But I also used to have a hard time buying birthday cards for my father, because I could never find one that said "You really sucked and made my childhood hell....Happy Birthday from your daughter and her therapist". (lol)

jacygirl

SlackOpsSeems like the best thing to do would have been to let it die with her, sans commentary. Not with a bang, but a whimper.

Yeah that formula of hiding abuse has really worked successfully for 5500 years of our literate version of civilization. Religious abuses, sexual/gender/child/kidnap abuses, and political abuses should be made VERY visible. We are insulted from the vast amount of horrid humanity which exists on this planet.

Abuse absolutely thrives hidden in quiescence.

reply to post by TheEthicalSkeptic


Sponsoring a public service announcement can be done without mentioning names or thrusting a family onto the world's stage.

They did this more for their own closure or for public awareness?

Fine if they want the world to know their personal problems. Who am I to judge?

I'm not saying that these people shouldn't alleviate their burden. Just that there is probably a better way than pointing fingers at dead crooks.

Child abuse, in any form, is perhaps the most despicable of crimes. What then, in this case, is the objective? Justice? There is no convicting, punishment or sentencing for a criminal that has escaped life.

I didn't say that child abuse should be kept under wraps, now did I? Attention can be brought to the subject without exposing the vulnerabilities of an entire family, even if it's your own.

From the article it seems that only two of the siblings wanted to announce it in the obituary.

Awareness. Is there anyone among us that does not realize this sort of activity occurs on a daily basis throughout the world? All of the awareness in the world didn't save these people from an abusive parent. This sort of information reaches adults, not the kids that need to see it. How many kids you know read the obituaries?

If they wanted to raise awareness then they could have placed a full or half page announcement in the same paper for a fraction of the funerary costs and reached a much wider audience.

reply to post by JohnPhoenix


I think you need to work on your reading comprehension skills. From the very article you posted:

“We were constantly physically, mentally abused even after being taken away and put in the children’s home,” Patrick Reddick said during his testimony in 1987. He said that on weekends, they were sent home to an office on Court Street in Reno, sometimes lined up and beaten with a steel-tipped belt.

Despite being removed from their mother and placed in an orphanage, the court system never tried to terminate parental rights, he said Wednesday.

From my reading of this, because the mother of the children never had her parental rights terminated, she had weekend visitations with the children during which she would continue to abuse the children. That's why it didn't make sense to you, I think. It wasn't that they were continuously abused by a variety of people, which does happen, btw, it was that the courts continued to allow her access to them while in an orphanage.

What occurred with them became a part of Nevada's law to allow children to sever ties with their parents. Their specific case was presented to former Sen. Sue Wagner as a reason why such a law needed to exist. That's pretty legit if you ask me. The only person I see doing some spinning is here. Honestly, considering what they reportedly went through, I think their mother should've considered herself lucky that they opted to go the obit route. Never underestimate the deep resentment that can exist in a heavily abused child. There's a whole lot of far more chilling outcomes than a simple obit. I could tell you one hell of a story sometime of what a couple of abused children of an elderly male did when he grew ill.

P.S. they got away with it, too.

Abuse tends to transfer from one to another. But I don't feel sorry for Hitler.

BossPickupTrucks
Abuse tends to transfer from one to another. But I don't feel sorry for Hitler.

When I was in school, I was told that I was more likely to become an abuser because of my mother. The very idea of that repulsed me pretty badly as I could never, in a million years, imagine myself making another human being feel like she made me feel--let alone someone as dependent on me as a child. Still, when I was pregnant with my son, although I didn't have a violent temper and had more of an issue of speaking too softly than yelling, I worried a little. Would that particular statistic bare out to be true? Now with a near adult son and a younger child, I know that I had nothing to worry about really. My experience with my mother didn't show me how to be like her. It showed me what it felt like to have a "mother" like her and that, despite having her as an example, I still learned how to be a good mother. I just did everything the opposite of what she would do. If one of my kids cry, I comfort and talk to them. I don't scream and belittle them into a fetal ball in the corner. If they don't clean their room, even if it's three days in a row, then it's not time to come in, grabbing one of them and throwing them against the wall and objects everywhere. It's calmly saying "hey, I need you to clean your room because it's not sanitary. sorry but no games for you til it's cleaned." Screaming, shoving, dragging, punching, slapping, throttling--those things have no place in my home.

I don't buy the excuse that people make for abused children that become child abusers. "It's because they were abused." I call B.S. on that one. Why should one choose to wallow in the mud like the pig that raised them?

WhiteAlice

BossPickupTrucks
Abuse tends to transfer from one to another. But I don't feel sorry for Hitler.

When I was in school, I was told that I was more likely to become an abuser because of my mother. The very idea of that repulsed me pretty badly as I could never, in a million years, imagine myself making another human being feel like she made me feel--let alone someone as dependent on me as a child. Still, when I was pregnant with my son, although I didn't have a violent temper and had more of an issue of speaking too softly than yelling, I worried a little. Would that particular statistic bare out to be true? Now with a near adult son and a younger child, I know that I had nothing to worry about really. My experience with my mother didn't show me how to be like her. It showed me what it felt like to have a "mother" like her and that, despite having her as an example, I still learned how to be a good mother. I just did everything the opposite of what she would do. If one of my kids cry, I comfort and talk to them. I don't scream and belittle them into a fetal ball in the corner. If they don't clean their room, even if it's three days in a row, then it's not time to come in, grabbing one of them and throwing them against the wall and objects everywhere. It's calmly saying "hey, I need you to clean your room because it's not sanitary. sorry but no games for you til it's cleaned." Screaming, shoving, dragging, punching, slapping, throttling--those things have no place in my home.

I don't buy the excuse that people make for abused children that become child abusers. "It's because they were abused." I call B.S. on that one. Why should one choose to wallow in the mud like the pig that raised them?

I did say tends.

That leaves room for anything else. Sometimes it skips a generation. A drunken dictator mother most likely whipped their children into shape while the children hated them all the time saying "my children will never be treated this way". Meanwhile they are grown up still doing their duties mommy programmed into them while junior is "protected" and a lazy fu(k on his way to possibly be a drunken dictator. FWIW

BossPickupTrucks
I did say tends.

That leaves room for anything else. Sometimes it skips a generation. A drunken dictator mother most likely whipped their children into shape while the children hated them all the time saying "my children will never be treated this way". Meanwhile they are grown up still doing their duties mommy programmed into them while junior is "protected" and a lazy fu(k on his way to possibly be a drunken dictator. FWIW

edit on 18-9-2013 by BossPickupTrucks because: (no reason given)

Your post almost makes it sound like that what people like my mother did with me was simply "whipping their children into shape". On the contrary, my mother destroyed me in so many ways. What she did wasn't "whipping me into shape", I was her whipping child. I was extraordinarily well behaved as a kid and I still got beaten. I got beaten because my dad cheated on her and I looked like him. I got beaten because she had a bad day at work. I got beaten because she felt small herself and wanted to feel immensely powerful.

"Skip a generation". Would love to see the statistics on that. If I ask my teenaged son (and teenage boys are notoriously lazy) to take the trash out, he does it in a heartbeat. He's glad to help me out. If I say, "can you vacuum?", again, it's done in a heart beat and he's glad to do it. He was accepted into college at age 15. He was the kid in his high school that separated boys from their fighting and scolded them both for acting like children. My youngest, whose only point of laziness is not always keeping her room clean, gets awards from her school for being that nice little girl who, when she sees another in pain, she comforts and protects them from bullies. She's an exceptional student. Both love talking with me about a variety of things.

I don't hide what my experiences as a child were from them. I don't hide the role that alcohol played. My son had the unfortunate experience of witnessing the insanity of his grandmother one time after I made it clear to her where her place was in our world as she was overstepping her bounds. They hold very strong opinions about drug and alcohol abuse and they are the ones that launch those discussions, not me. Neither have violent tempers and when my eldest argues with me, the worst infraction he commits is an illogical argument that he'll stick to until the bitter end.

You make it sound as if child abuse is a chemical mental illness when, in and of itself, it is not. Or that, alternatively, the lack of abuse makes for an overly coddled lazy child. Wrong again. Psychopathy or narcissism would likely be the most prevalent mental illnesses among child abusers and that is something that originates from early childhood through their environment and even, possible childhood brain injury. www.female-offenders.com...

JohnPhoenix
I'm glad they pulled it because

Children should respect their parents. Even if they are bad parents. The bible puts it like this Honor your mother and father. Yeah.. these kids are going to hell for this LOL.

We don't know any of the truth of this matter. She was investigated - what was the findings? Apparently she didn't serve jail time so they found nothing.

Obits are supposed to help folks remember the good things in a persons life and keeping this obit in the paper would encourage other adult CHILDREN to again act like spoiled brats and cause strife and resentment between other family members. You can't have family feuds because some smart alec adult children are mouthing off in public. That's just not right.

edit on 12-9-2013 by JohnPhoenix because: sp

What a ridiculous, ignorant, disgusting attitude.

"These adult children, victims of abuse, are acting like 'brats' for celebrating the passing of their abuser, and are going to hell because the bible says to respect your parents."


The bible also doesn't advocate or condone blatant child abuse. Also, you are not god and do not get to decide who goes to hell and who doesn't. (Not that hell actually exists-- apparently you know nothing about the real bible, other than what some other ignorant human told you, but that's another issue.) Wait... didn't Christ have a quote about rejecting or hating your parents, as being necessary to follow him? Or does that only appear in Thomas? I get those mixed up sometimes. But I digress.....


The bible says to respect your parents, because your parents are supposed to have your best interest at heart, and anything they say or do to you is supposed to be for your own good. That only works if the parent is a good person, and a true parent-- Not a horrible, damaged abuser.



Back to the issue at hand-- I don't think the paper should have pulled it. Especially if this woman didn't have any other living relatives who objected to it. If that were the case, it would become a more complicated issue. An obituary is for the living, not the dead. The dead are dead, and don't need them. Abusers should be shamed, rather than thinking that their memory will be preserved due to polite social constraints favoring silence.


I really hope you don't have kids-- your attitude makes me fear for them. Honestly.

Hushabye
reply to post by _BoneZ_

 

Nice strawman there, dude.

You clearly have no idea what "strawman" means.

SlackOps
The siblings felt the need to inform their community of child abuse. They also wanted the community to know about their mother specifically. As if to say, "In case you were wondering..."

I think that's another important element of this, and possibly part of its therapeutic value. It is like saying:


"Dear community-- we told you this was happening when we were kids and you didn't really stop it. This was not just a childhood story or mood swing. We still feel this way."

jacygirl
I also used to have a hard time buying birthday cards for my father, because I could never find one that said "You really sucked and made my childhood hell....Happy Birthday from your daughter and her therapist". (lol)

jacygirl

You just gave me an idea for a completely untapped market in the area of greeting cards. I mean, it's a niche market... but sadly I bet those would sell....

reply to post by FlyersFan


Anybody else notice that the date was a bit premature? The obit is dated "September 30, 2013" and as of now, it's only the 18th.

reply to post by Hushabye


I've had a few friends that were horrifically abused and it wasn't an easy thing for them to deal with even years later. Sometimes it's better to gradually forget all of the pain you've been through than to forgive. With their mother gone, I think those children have the closure they need to forget about the past and live happier lives.

JohnPhoenix
I'm glad they pulled it because

Children should respect their parents. Even if they are bad parents. The bible puts it like this Honor your mother and father. Yeah.. these kids are going to hell for this LOL.

We don't know any of the truth of this matter. She was investigated - what was the findings? Apparently she didn't serve jail time so they found nothing.

Obits are supposed to help folks remember the good things in a persons life and keeping this obit in the paper would encourage other adult CHILDREN to again act like spoiled brats and cause strife and resentment between other family members. You can't have family feuds because some smart alec adult children are mouthing off in public. That's just not right.

edit on 12-9-2013 by JohnPhoenix because: sp

If there is a god and he is really the loving and kind deity that people say he is, I don't think he'll send a group of siblings to hell because they didn't show "respect" to their abusive mother. Not every single commandment is meant to be taken literally.

These siblings were quite civil when they wrote the obituary. If it included excessive vulgarity and was mindlessly vindictive, then maybe you would have a point.