ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Russian officials are closely watching a case involving an Anchorage mother of six who was charged with child abuse after a video that aired on "Dr. Phil" showed her punishing her adopted Russian son by squirting hot sauce into his mouth and forcing him into a cold shower.
The case has sparked a public uproar in Russia at a time that nation is nearing completion of a bilateral treaty with the U.S. on adoptions. Russia called for the agreement following the deaths of Russian children who were abused or neglected by their adoptive American parents in recent years.
Russian officials say they have not ruled out pushing for the return of the 7-year-old boy to his native country should his adoptive mother, Jessica Beagley, be found guilty.
"This video caused a huge wave of outrage in Russia," said Andrey Bondarev of the Russian Consulate in Seattle. "We're going to pay attention because this behavior is absolutely unacceptable."
Beagley's attorney, meanwhile, maintains she is a caring mother who submitted the video to the show because she genuinely wanted help.
The boy and his fraternal twin brother remain in the home with Beagley, her husband and their four biological children. Bondarev, who twice visited the family, said he saw no reason to have the boys removed at this point, and neither did authorities. He said Beagley vowed to never exert that kind of discipline again.
Authorities began investigating Beagley, 36, after the video aired in November in a segment on the CBS show called "Mommy Confessions." The city charged Beagley with one misdemeanor count of child abuse last month.
She has pleaded not guilty.
The video, shot by Beagley's 10-year-old daughter, included sounds of the boy screaming behind the shower curtain and Beagley yelling about the consequences of misbehavior. It brought many in the show's audience to tears.
On the air, host Phil McGraw called Beagley's actions abusive and over the top. TRY TORTURE YOU LAME ASSHOLE DR. PHONY. EXCELLENT THAT YOU ARE A PRO AT STATING THE OBVIOUS.
Beagley is married to an Anchorage police officer who was aware of the punishment, Bondarev said. The husband, Gary Beagley, also was investigated, according to municipal prosecutor Cynthia Franklin. She declined to elaborate, saying only that he has not been charged.
As a mother I cannot fathom using these methods to discipline my child; however I do not think that lumping her in a category such as child abuse is fair. She needs treatment or counseling not a criminal record. This is where you send child services in to work with the family.
Secondly, the father admits to knowing the methods of discipline yet as a law enforcement officer obviously did not believe a law was being violated. If a law, such as child abuse, was violated he should be held to a higher standard and be liable as well.
My daughter loves hot sauce. She will drink it straight up. She puts it on everything. My boys love very spicy food, too.
Using it as punishment is really cruel, though. In my opinion, it's abuse. Anything you do to a child just to hurt them is abuse. Teaching boundaries is one thing, but pouring hot sauce in a child's mouth, pushing into cold shower and making them stay? That has no purpose other than to torture the child.
Feeding children hot peppers has been a form of abuse in a couple of recent (last 5 yrs) child murder cases. And there would be no question of calling it abuse were it hot, scalding water.
Dr phil is an asshole. I put his opinion up there with Gay Midget Dwarf Cruise on matters of anything not involving cross dressing and creeping out general population.
I always ask the same question when I read this shit...what the hell ever became of a good old fashioned spankin'?
I never had one myself, "the look" from my parents was enough to stop me in my tracks & as I got older curtailing my social life by being grounded did a damn fine job too.
I have my undergrad in social work. I completed a 2 year internship w/Department of Children & Family Services. I could not work in the field after I graduated because I was already so callus to it all. There are absolutely disgusting forms of child abuse out there. I once commented to a professor that it's as if some of these people sit around all day & think of the most screwed up ways to harm children. Wish I could save them all.
(02-12-2011, 02:42 PM)Lady Cop Wrote: so many of the cases i cover here are child abuse/murder stories. it does sicken you. one of the worst here, the washer---->
Yes, the washing machine one is horrific. Heart breaking.
I worked at an OB-GYN clinic serving low-income women & everyone that came thru the door was tested for drugs. If a lady tested positive we would fax the area hospitals the positive drug results so that they were alerted to test the baby. I have a hard time believing this lady wasn't using while pregnant & this innocent child slipped through the cracks.
I'd like to add that maybe ALL newborns meconium be tested for drugs. Anyone/race/economical status can be a user.
(02-13-2011, 09:44 PM)netsleuth Wrote: Horrible. Why the hell do people like this adopt, let alone have children?
give birth...welfare.
foster...cash help
adopt...who the hell knows?
If you adopt out of the foster care system, in some states, you get cash every month and other freebies geared towards "helping the child" until until they are 18.
(CNN) -- A Florida father has told police that a body found in the pest control truck he was driving is that of his daughter, authorities said Wednesday.
Jorge Barahona, 53, already faces a charge of aggravated child abuse for injuries to his son, who was found with him in the truck on the side of I-95 near West Palm Beach, officials said.
According to a probable cause affidavit filed by the West Palm Beach Police Department, a roadside assistance ranger with the Florida Department of Transportation stopped to check the red Toyota pickup Monday around 5:30 a.m. and found a 10-year-old boy inside, next to an open gas can.
The child "appeared to be in respiratory distress and (was) trembling" and his clothing "was soaked with an unknown chemical," the affidavit said.
The ranger found Barahona on the ground beside the truck and called for help.
After Barahona and his son were transported to a hospital, a worker decontaminating the truck discovered a plastic bag containing what was later determined to be a human body, the document said.
Barahona and his wife are the parents of four children adopted from Florida's foster care system, including the boy in the hospital, according to Florida Department of Children and Families spokesman Mark Riordan.
The boy is hospitalized in the intensive care unit with severe burns to his abdomen, upper thighs and buttocks, the affidavit said. While examining him, doctors also noted previous injuries to the boy, including a broken collarbone, a broken arm, scarring to his buttocks and lower abdomen and ligature marks on both wrists, police said.
Barahona told police he was distraught over the death of his daughter, and he intended to commit suicide by dousing himself with gasoline and setting himself on fire, the affidavit said. There was no mention in the affidavit of how his daughter died. Barahona said he didn't go through with his suicide plan because his son was with him, the document added.
At a hearing Wednesday in Miami to determine where the other two children of Barahona and his wife would be placed, officials said the girl found dead in the truck was the twin of the 10-year-old boy who is hospitalized.
Barahona will likely face other charges in the "complicated investigation," West Palm Beach Police spokesman Chase Scott said.
The boy suffered burns and injuries from inhaling unknown contaminants, Scott said, and authorities said in court Wednesday his skin is still being consumed by the substance that was on it.
"He is in a difficult medical condition" and is in isolation, Scott said.
Police don't know how long father and son were exposed to what Scott called "incredibly toxic chemicals" -- so potent that staff caring for the boy at the hospital became ill as well, he said.
The FBI is examining the truck and took samples of the chemicals, Scott said.
Neighbors of Barahona told reporters that he is an exterminator.
The Florida Department of Children and Families opened a child protection investigation within the past few days to look into a complaint involving the Barahona family, said Riordan, and it wasn't the first.
"Several times we've been out to the home," he said, but would not elaborate on the nature of the complaint in the current case.
At the hearing in Miami, a judge ordered that the remaining two children in the home be placed in foster care with the state.
Reporters in the courtroom Wednesday heard tales of abuse, mainly of the twins, from state officials and experts. The caller to the child protection hot line in the latest case reported that the twins were routinely locked in a bathroom for long periods and were bound, the court heard. The story was corroborated by interviews with the other two children in the home, officials said in court.
Florida child welfare administrators may have missed two opportunities to save a 10-year-old twin girl who was found dead and covered in acid in the back of a pickup truck Monday off Interstate-95 in Palm Beach County.
About eight months before Nubia Doctor's death, the state Department of Children and Families received a report that something may not have been right in the girl's foster home in Miami.
The June report to DCF's abuse hotline said Nubia had been acting out inappropriately, suggesting she might have been experiencing difficulties.
According to the report, Nubia had been suffering from "uncontrollable'' hunger, and had been stealing food. The girl had become very thin, and was losing her hair. She also was observed to be "nervous'' and "jittery.''
Though Nubia suffered from a medical condition - sources say it involved the girl's hormones - there was no documentation in the girl's file that she had seen a doctor for the concerns raised in June, a source said.
Sources with knowledge of the case do not know whether DCF took any action in response to the report, which was coded in the agency's child welfare computer system as a "special conditions'' report, as opposed to an abuse or neglect case. Typically, special conditions reports do not lead to the removal of a child from his or her parents.
On Feb. 10, DCF received a report from a teacher that Nubia and her fraternal twin brother, Victor, age 10, were being bound by their hands and feet and made to stand in the bathtub. That day, an investigator tried to locate the children, but was told by their adoptive mother, Carmen Barahona, that she and her husband, Jorge Barahona, were separated, and that he - not she - had custody of the twins. However, a report issued later suggested that Carmen Barahona was "implicated'' in Nubia's disappearance. An investigator was told Carmen knew the whereabouts of Jorge and the children.
On Monday, authorities came across a red pickup truck along Interstate-95 in Palm Beach County. The truck was emblazoned with the name of Jorge Barahona's extermination company. Inside the truck, authorities found Victor in the midst of a seizure. The twins' adoptive father, Jorge Barahona, was slumped behind the wheel, and both Victor and Barahona were suffering from chemical burns. Both were overcome by toxic fumes.
What authorities did not discover until eight hours later - after DCF officials alerted them - was that Nubia's partially decomposed body had remained in the red pickup hidden from sight. Emergency workers, wearing hazardous materials suits, retrieved her body at about 5 p.m. The hazmat members had returned to the truck hours after state DCF investigators, searching for the family's four adopted children, could not locate Nubia.
The roots of the tragedy that unfolded on Monday apparently began the previous week when the Barahona's granddaughter - who stayed with the couple often after school - disclosed to a therapist that terrible things were happening in her grandparents' home, a source told The Miami Herald.
The granddaughter told her therapist that she had seen the two adoptive twins bound by the hands and feet and forced to stay in the bathroom. The little girl told her therapist she wanted to open her "piggy bank'' so she could find the money to rescue the twins.
A record of the allegations said the grandmother, Carmen, called the alleged abuse "a family secret'' that was "just between us.''
On Wednesday, West Palm Beach police, who are in charge of the criminal investigation, filed an affidavit detailing their investigation. They reported that Jorge Barahona had told them he was trying to commit suicide on Monday because he was distraught over Nubia's death.
Barahona told police that he was upset over the death of Nubia and was trying to kill himself. Barahona said he pulled over to the side of the highway. He gave Victor sleeping pills and doused himself with gasoline, the affidavit said. Barahona intended to set himself on fire, but he couldn't because Victor was with him.
But police said they found inconsistencies between Barahona's story and the injuries on Victor, which led them to charge the father with aggravated child abuse. Police said they found Victor soaked in chemicals and sitting in the truck next to a five-gallon gas tank.
Investigators later learned from hospital officials that the boy had extensive physical injuries. According to the police affidavit, the boy had a fractured arm, fractured clavicle, marks from some type of cord or rope around both wrists, and scarring on his lower abdomen and butt. The body of the boy's sister was found inside a plastic bag.
(03-15-2013, 07:12 PM)aussiefriend Wrote: You see Duchess, I have set up a thread to discuss something and this troll is behaving just like Riotgear did.
i've lost track of all the cases that were in part due to the failures of DCF, child services, whatever. from high profile like Zahra to all the ones you never hear about. i KNOW DCF is overwhelmed and has staggering caseloads. so when do "we" give them the money and resources they need? it's our kids! is there some other place we could steal the money? because i've been hearing about the DCF failure/excuses for my entire adult career!!
DCF is a difficult place to work. States keep placing hiring freezes, funds are being cut. States are hiring ppl w/ an English/Lit degree to do the work of social workers. An ideal case load for a social worker in DCF is 17, when I left in 2004 the average was 32 in the state I resided.
It's the hint of arsenic that gives it that extra kick.
Love the cover of that book. That's precisely how I view him.![[Image: Zy3rKpW.png]](https://i.imgur.com/Zy3rKpW.png)
