How do you punish someone for doing this unthinkable act?

This isn’t shocking but I’ve read many horror stories. Parents lose it, it’s true. It’s always been true. She should be removed from her daughter.

Having had a mother who lost it over issues such as these I would say that the child needs to be removed while the mother goes through some very intensive therapy.

1. She loses custody—permanently.

2. She is imprisoned for many years.

3. I know this won’t happen, but I would prefer forced sterilization so she can’t grow any more victims.

@marinelife I think also tattooing her forehead to read…“I glued my baby girls hands to the wall and kicked and beat her” would work for me.

I’m with marinelife.

No custody, jail, therapy for both of them. Not allowed to have more children. Not allowed to be in authority over children. Publicizing story.

My response isn’t compatible with modern standards of civility.

Jail time, not sure I would say life in prison.

A psych evaluation and treatment.

I too would want her to be sterilized if possible.

I am curious to know why exactly the mom took the actions she did. What possessed her to glue the child’s hands? I don’t think that would ever occur to me in my wildest thoughts as something to do to someone else, child or adult. How did she come up with it? I can understand when a mom gets to her limit and shakes a child in frustration (not that I understand as in it is ok, just can see that happening) or locks them in their room, but gluing their hands and relentlessly beating a child, it makes me ill thinking about it. But then, I never would think to put hot sauce in a child’s mouth, and it seems that is done more commonly than I knew.

Look, I understand vindictiveness and the urge to return hurt for hurt, to punish. I wish that as a society we could get away from that, however. What does it do to advance civilization? Nothing that I’ve been able to see.

I support the idea of jails, if they can be made relatively safe (considering that they’re generally overfilled with criminals, too violent, and guards themselves fall prey to the habit of “punishing”), because they at least segregate people who are willing to commit bad acts from those of us who refrain from that. But “hurting people” because they have caused hurt (or allowing other prisoners to do it for us, so that we get the vicarious thrill of knowing that Jeffrey Dahmer was killed in prison, for example) doesn’t help us. Let’s move beyond that if we can.

A mother who would treat her toddler like that is obviously unbalanced, whether temporarily or permanently. She already has awful demons in her head.

“An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind.” – Rabbi Hillel

@CWOTUS thank you and lots of lurve for your response.

I always have a hard time articulating how I feel about these situations because as awful as it is, I can never help but wonder what horrible demons someone who does these things must be struggling with. No matter how jaded or cynical I get, I can never bring myself to believe that any sane person would torture their own child. This woman needs to have the child removed from her custody then she needs to receive the intensive therapy she needs in order to be helped not to ever do this, or anything similar again.

Lock her in a room of 20 mothers for 20 minutes with no legal penalty for whatever happens within those walls. :D

@CWOTUS As you probably suspect there is more to the story.

”Police said numerous people say they’d seen Escalona inflict pain on the child in the past. Now, the little girl may have extensive brain damage and countless injuries.”

And at what point in time do people simply stop ignoring obvious instances of abuse and get involved?? How anyone can observe a child being abused and not do or say anything is beyond me!! I would say these people who witnessed this child’s prior abuse and didn’t do anything should be punished as well.

A more detailed report here

Poor little thing…I hope she recovers from this :(

This has to indicate a severe anger psychosis. I would hypothesize that the mother became enraged by the toddler’s “misbehavior” and then further enraged by the child’s refusal to stand still for punishment. Solution? Immobilize the child. Now, a normal person, assuming it went this far, would lose the emotional anger response during the time it took to glue the child’s hands to the wall and think “WTF am I doing, gluing my child’s hands to the wall?”

It takes a deranged mind to not only retain the original rage but escalate it during this time period. The child needs to be in permanent protective custody and the mother needs to be institutionalized. Perhaps she can be reformed with treatment that addresses her mental illness, but she should have to accept voluntary sterilization before being paroled.

I agree with @CWOTUS that we society members have a visceral desire to see someone like this instantly punished but that doesn’t provide us any insight into the “whys” nor any techniques to identify and prevent these things in the future.

@Blueroses Again I am sure there is volumes more to this story but at face value this mom with 3 other kids and a 7 yr old no less appears to have been able to hold it together and raise her kids fairly well and something just made her snap. She obviously needs serious help and intervention here…just wish someone who saw this woman struggling stepped up sooner.

@Cruiser I do some social volunteer work. Currently, I’m tutoring some teens who live in a group home who come from some astoundingly bad parenting. It’s amazing how fiercely loyal and protective children can be of what they perceive as “normal”.

They develop coping skills (if they’re lucky to live long enough) with perspectives like “Sometimes mommy gets very angry. I have to do this to get through it, but I can never tell a stranger about it.” The parent is often very good at projecting a decent public face while nobody is even aware of the climate of fear at home.

“Child Protective Services has taken custody of the girl and her three siblings…”

A 22 year old with 4 kids. No wonder she’s fucked in the head. I would want her thoroughly checked out in the head before imposing a punishment because this behaviour is not normal. A normal person cannot do this to a child over potty training. If she does come out nutty I’d want her in a mental institution asap and yes probably sterilized. If she really is normal with serious anger issues then I’d want her tried for attempted murder. If she knows what she’s doing, she knows that that sort of a beating can cause the toddler’s death.

I wonder whether any of the other kids were abused :/

@Blueroses That is why I value so much our system having the state prosecute criminal activity and not the individual. But, of course we have many flaws in the system.

A while back a teen relative of mine was attacked/hit by another kid, and then the kid ran away. My relative pursued him and hit him back. When the cops arrived my relatives mom tried to argue her son was defending himself. As she told us the story looking for support that her son had a right to do what he did, I said, “well, I can understand he had the desire to retaliate in the moment, but that was not self defense, the kid was running away already.” She looked at me and said, “that’s the same thing the police officer told me.” I don’t know if they look at it differently in the country she is from, but that was when it really hit home for me why vigilante revenge and mafia rules are not a good idea, and how I value the ideals of the American criminal system.

I suggest that, in addition to what others have mentioned above, someone glue her hands to the wall and kick her repeatedly.

Fuck “advancing civilization”. Sometimes vengeance is appropriate.

@Cruiser I could not agree more with your point about someone picking up on what was going on in that house and doing something about it. I think there are a lot of people who might have a gut feeling that something is wrong but don’t have the wherewithal to do something about it. I know a person who was horribly brutalized as a child and several report cards from elementary and middle school include comments about his “troubled home life” but no one ever stepped up on this child’s behalf. @Blueroses makes a good point too. Along with what he said, think that a lot of times parents have a child convinced that whatever kind of abuse they suffer is only because they really had it it coming. I know that when I was a teen and my father was physically abusive I just chalked up to my bad behavior and figured I deserved it. It didn’t matter what he did, I talked back or (insert some other average teen behavior here) so of course I deserved whatever he decided I should get. Since I was only getting my due, it would never have occurred to me that what he did was abuse.

I’m with @marinelife here,“I know it won’t happen but I would prefer forced sterilization so she can’t grown any more victims.”

There is no ‘punishment’ that is going to help in this situation any more than the mother’s ‘punishment’ helped her child. The child has to be taken in to care as her mother is a danger to her.

@marinelife and if the time in prison makes her realize the harm she caused. Why shouldn’t she be able to have other kids for one mistake?

Forced sterilization, hard labor, and a lobotomy, in that order.

I agree with @Simone_De_Beauvoir Let’s make sure the daughter is far away and safe from her mother. Or the mom far away, and not able to do bullshit like that again. Let’s worry about the rest later.
Reading stuff like that might not surprise me, but it still sucks. I’m glad all my dad did when I pissed myself was give me a bath. Jesus.

I think she should have a hot poker shoved into her eye hole…..for starters.

I vote for a combination of all the proposed punishments followed by a psych ward.
If she didn’t need it before, she certainly will after. . .

Jesus, what a nut.

Take all of her kids away from her, and sterilize her.

I wonder what the mother’s parents did to her…

@Zaku Obviously they didn’t drop her on her head hard enough.^~

@Hibernate Because being so abusive will not be cured by prison. Maybe by years and years of therapy, but I wouldn’t even count on that.

So can she get another chance? Or you prefer “castrating” her so she can’t have any more kids in this situation? [don’t forget she can do this to other kids even if they are not their own]

I don’t think it would ever be legal to sterilize her, I just said I would be for it.

Does she deserve another chance to traumatize a child? I don’t think so.

Again, I’m with @marinelife in that I’d not gamble a living thing in her care in order to give her a chance to prove herself a better human. Let her live well in other ways no one can suffer reliance by.

@Zaku While I agree that this woman ought not to have any more kids, I don’t think it wise to create a precedent for a legal entity to make that call.