One of the scariest things about vampires, werewolves, and zombies is that they're human-shaped. You could be fooled by one before realizing, too late, that it was a monster.
If you were the children of Ebyan Farah, you wouldn't find out until too late that the monster was your mother.
Apparently, 28-year-old Ebyan wanted to go spend the day with friends and, rather than getting a sitter, she herded her five children into a 2'x6' closet and blocked the door shut with furniture. Trapped in this indoor D.I.Y. Black Hole of Calcutta for ten hours, two of the children died. I guess it's a good thing that Ms. Farah didn't decide to make her visit a sleepover.
The three survivors have been placed in the custody of Child Protective Services and best of luck to them in growing up sane after this.
I refuse to comment on this on the grounds that I cannot restrain my rage sufficiently.
ReplyDeleteSo, the article mentions the "close-knit community", and also talks about how distraught the family is...so WHY THE FUCK couldn't she just ask a member of this community to watch the kids? Or why didn't she drop them off at a relative's house? Some community.
ReplyDeleteChristina LMT,
ReplyDeleteWish I could read Somali.
And still we make forced sterilization illegal at any cost.
ReplyDeleteWe can take away your right to breathe, but we cannot, even with evidence that you are a child murderer or molester or rapist, ever take away your "right to procreate." She's 28. She might take a plea for 30 years, and with good time, be out by 43, in time to pop out a couple more kids.
This is the problem I have with Child Abductive Services. A parent spanks a kid, and CPS is on them like stink on sh!t. Someone, you know, tortures their kids, and nobody knows nuffin' until one or more of them ends up dead, and possibly not even then.
ReplyDeleteOr worse, CPS takes them, and then gives the kids back.
Worse still, CPS takes the kid(s) and gives them to someone more abusive who ends up killing one or more.
I don't have an answer, but I believe this: Creatures like Ebyan Farah should be taken out behind the court ouse and put down like a rabid animal.
@ Tam: jump down below the page break; they've got it in English, too.
ReplyDeleteIt's the comments I want to read. :)
ReplyDeleteToo many women view their uterus as an ATM machine, where every kid equals a larger government check. They pop out children, who are then treated like toy dollies, to be played with when mom is in the mood to do so, and viewed as an obstacle to mom's party lifestyle when playtime is over.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that you can't just put your toys back in your toybox.
"Too many women view their uterus as an ATM machine, where every kid equals a larger government check."
ReplyDeleteIn biology they told me that someone has to help the woman get pregnant. I'm just sayin'.
You know, poisonous snakes often come in bright flourescent colors to help identify their toxic nature.
ReplyDeleteWhat a pity human-shaped venomous creatures don't have the same identifying features.
What strikes me about this woman is how incredibly self-centered and stupid she must be to have thought of this. As Christina LMT has already pointed out, why couldn't she have asked a neighbor to watch the kids? But, oh no, apparently that just wasn't the thing to do, so instead she devises a prison for the kids. What was she thinking about as she closed the door on the kids and then struggled to move TWO beds in place to seal it? I wonder if it even occured to her to ask herself how would she feel if her husband had said he wanted to lock her in the closet so he could go out with his buddies for the day? Well now she'll know, and I hope she stays locked up for the next 50 years or more.
ReplyDeletePsychopath?
ReplyDeleteWeird as it sounds, I don't feel angry over this story. I'm fully aware of the horror and misery of it all, but somehow anger that last more than a couple minutes just feels like a waste of my own energy.
ReplyDeleteOTOH, I don't have kids; I imagine being a parent makes a difference.
I can think of some appropriate punishments. Lock her in a 2x6 closet with the corpses of her children for a few days.
ReplyDelete"What a pity human-shaped venomous creatures don't have the same identifying features."
ReplyDeleteSpend enough time with someone and their true colors are readily displayed for all who care to see.
Kevin said,
ReplyDelete"This is the problem I have with Child Abductive Services. A parent spanks a kid, and CPS is on them like stink on sh!t. Someone, you know, tortures their kids, and nobody knows nuffin' until one or more of them ends up dead, and possibly not even then."
Sir, I don't know what your experiences are, and don't know about Arizona's CPS. But here in Texas, it's awfully damned hard to get a removal unless you can show severe harm and iminent harm. I've never seen even the most liberal CPS worker so much as lift an eyebrow to a parent spanking their kid.
Nobody here much cares for removals. That said, I've been around them (I called in one last week that went to emergency removal), and I've made the call for CPS many times. Not just once or twice. Most of the CPS folk I've worked with are focused on what's best for the kids, and most start with the assumption that repairing a broken family is by far better than ripping a family apart. More of my frustrations with CPS have come from seeing them fail to act decisively, than from seeing them make too much of a stink about something small.
I'm genuinely curious, though: what should have been done after this? Leave the kids with the same family that didn't inquire who was taking care of the kids? Kick them out on the street? I should think that this is one of the few instances where you would applaud the involvement of CPS.
Well, I'd say something about the culture and all, but I've learned through the news about too many women who take their kids, put them in the back seat of the car and head for the lake from all kinds of different Social/ Demographic/ Ethnic/Religious groups to go there. Sometimes, a Monster is just a Monster. Question: Does Indiana have the Death Penelty, and does it use it very often? Hate to see your Tax Dollars being wasted on buying Monster Chow for the life of this....thing.
ReplyDeleteIn biology they told me that someone has to help the woman get pregnant. I'm just sayin'.
ReplyDeleteYes, but realistically, finding that help is not all that hard if you're not picky.
No monsters, only people.
ReplyDeleteJim
Matt, I've been harrased by the VA CPS, had a confirmed finding of child neglect claiming my child was at serious risk of moderate harm, or something like that. The report went on in great detail about what good care I was taking of my child, but since I was suffering at the time from a severe clinical depression, what little energy I had was spent on my daughter, and yes, the rest of the house was a pit. They visited the house twice, and then instead of the third promised visit two weeks later before making a determination, a week later we got a letter in the mail. We hired a laywer who took the case saying it was one of the most egregious cases she'd seen in quite a while, and the finding was overturned by the department itself. If the social worker really thought that was my child was in such danger, why the hell wouldn't there be any followups? Just swoop in, behave in a manner guaranteed to make my depression worse, and then vanish? No referrals to any agencies, no plans for future visits to see how we were doing, no nothing.
ReplyDeleteOne of the worst parts of the whole mess for me was at the same time as they were harassing us, a city over a daycare provider had called the department multiple times about the toddler in her care who kept showing up with odd bruises and injuries. Each time it was investigated, and each time nothing was found wrong. After the fourth or fifth time she reported it, the mom guessed who was calling CPS on her, pulled the kid from day care, and less than a week later beat him to death.
So yes, I have some major problems with CPS/DCF/acronym of your choice here. I'm sure that some of the workers do have the best interests of the children at heart, but my personal experiences and those of people I know have been almost invariably unhelpful at best, usually harrassment.
But here in Texas, it's awfully damned hard to get a removal unless you can show severe harm and iminent harm.
ReplyDeleteBased on what I've seen, if that's the case it's because of the judges in front of whom CPS cases appear. I know for a fact that there are people working for Texas CPS who will recommend that kids be taken from their parents just because the house isn't quite clean enough to perform brain surgery in. Some of the CPS investigators are easygoing people who understand the realities of life with kids. But some of them are goddamned predators. And the worst part of the latter is that -- again, from what I've gathered upon my own observations -- there are seemingly little to no uniform standards for removal. It's mostly left up to the whim of the investigators. Which wouldn't be so bad if all of them understood those aforementioned realities. But they don't. And kids have died, indirectly because of that.
"I can think of some appropriate punishments. Lock her in a 2x6 closet with the corpses of her children for a few days."
ReplyDeletesee "scaphism"
Kum ba ya..... It takes a village people. Shame on you all. How offten does anyone here feed and house there neighboors children? Have you bought your neighboor a car or sent there children to college lately. This has to stop, to each according to his ability, to each according to his need.Oh, Barry deliver us.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, Library-Gryffon, and Kevin: Each of y'all point to harassment by CPS, and in the same post point to children dying because of non-intervention. I think we all can agree that there's no calculus that can prove "Yep, that right there is a guaran-damned-teed child fatality in 3.5 weeks, if I don't make a removal."
ReplyDeleteThere's a big movement afoot to standardize, and from what that means is that the quality of the social work goes down, because the P.S. investigator can't take a breath without first calling his case superviror. Investigations take longer. Action that should be taken gets put off. Other cases don't get dealt with.
Most of those folks, that I've met, are professionals willing to be on-call in the middle of the night, getting less than $30/yr starting, for their masters degrees and their nasty jobs. I wouldn't do the work. I get pissed at them.
But someone has to, at some point. Because there's often nowhere else to look to.
Each of y'all point to harassment by CPS, and in the same post point to children dying because of non-intervention.
ReplyDeleteI don't see that as inconsistent, given the fact that CPS is an agency with finite resources. This finite amount of resources means, of course, that if a caseworker goes on a wild goose chase, that leaves him/her unable to intervene in other, bona fide child abuse cases. This, of course, leads to said children dying because of...non-intervention because said caseworker was dragging out a minor case with complete and utter bullshit when he/she could have been on this other case.
I know they have a difficult job and I don't envy them. I would also never paint them all as family wreckers. But considering the fact that I have personally dealt with one such individual, who did "recommend kids be taken from their parents just because the house isn't quite clean enough to perform brain surgery in," I'm sure you can understand my cynicism as I ponder how many others like that there are working for CPS. Maybe if those people exercised some of that common sense (i.e., "hey, kids live here, the house ain't gonna be spotless") and weren't such senseless tightasses there wouldn't be that movement for more oversight from superiors.
Well, thank GAWD this woman didn't believe in abortion. Cuz if they had been aborted, "christian" theology would have consigned them to HELL for the "sins" they committed before they were born and not "baptisted" to cleanse them of the aforementioned "sin".
ReplyDeleteAny hint on which religious superstition this woman followed?
"And still we make forced sterilization illegal at any cost."
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure Buck v. Bell is still law of the land...
Fiftycal,
ReplyDeleteWell, her uncle's name is Mohamed, so I'm guessing they aren't Amish.