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the blog of a bear

this is where a bear will post stuff.

my child

and sighted people had the nerve to question my parent skills as a blind person? really?

April 18, 2011 by stickbear 1 Comment

Oh yeah, this is exactly what I wanted to wake up to reading via rss feeds this morning.
While scrolling through RSS feeds, I come across
this.
Here’s the article in it’s entirety.

Vancouver couple have been arrested for allegedly holding their two young autistic boys captive in a darkened, caged room.
Responding to a tip from Child Protective Services, police officers raided the couple’s apartment Tuesday and found the boys, ages 5 and 7, confined in a bedroom with a cage-like door. The boys could not speak, were wearing diapers and were not enrolled in school or receiving medical attention, according to police reports. They had no toys in their bedroom, which also had a cage over the window.
The parents, John C. Eckhart, 30, and Alayna M. Higdon, 26, were taken into custody on suspicion of second-degree criminal mistreatment and unlawful imprisonment, both class C felonies. On Wednesday morning, Clark County Superior Court Judge Robert Lewis set bail at $25,000 each. As of Wednesday afternoon, the two were in the Clark County Jail.
Meanwhile, the boys and the couple’s two other boys, ages 9 years and 11 months, were placed in protective custody, Vancouver police spokeswoman Kim Kapp said. The 9-year-old and 11-month-old were not being held in caged rooms.
The case surfaced after a social worker responded to a complaint about children being locked in cages. After knocking at the door, the social worker reported hearing a strange wailing coming from the apartment at 4317 N.E. 66th Ave.
“It kind of sounded like a bird, but I wondered if it was a kid,” the caseworker told officers, according to police reports.
Responding officers arrived later, and Higdon answered the door with a baby in her arms. The officer reported looking down a hallway and seeing a child’s arm hanging through a caged door. There was garbage and food wrappers on the floor, and the apartment was dirty and grimy, according to police reports. The cupboards in the kitchen contained little food; a pizza and Mountain Dew were in the refrigerator.
The couple’s 9-year-old son told officers that his younger brothers were fed but never allowed out of the room. The 9-year-old grew quiet when officers asked if the parents ever physically assaulted the children, according to reports. There was no reports of physical abuse.
The door of the room had been removed and replaced with a metal slatted cage that encompassed the entire doorway, Kapp said. The room was dark, with a single mattress inside.
When an officer went to the bedroom, where the boys were confined, “they were making moaning noises and tapped their fingers together through the holes between the metal bars,” according to police reports.
The officer reported smelling the scent of urine coming from the boys.
Asked why her children were locked in the room, Higdon said they are hyperactive and she doesn’t want them running wild. Pressed about why they weren’t in school, she told the officer that she can’t find a special school for their autism and tries to home-school them — even though the 9-year-old told investigators that his mother doesn’t teach them, according to police reports.
She also explained that the boys are still in diapers because they don’t understand how to go to the bathroom. She said she was not responsible for their well-being because they were Eckhart’s biological children, not hers.
After contacting Eckhart, whom police reports describe as Higdon’s fiancé, he became antagonistic toward the officers, yelling that they have no right to take his children.
“What am I supposed to do?” he asked police. “Let them run around the house? What kind of (expletive) parenting is that? They are both autistic.”
Higdon told officers that her fiancé uses marijuana.
When officers let the boys out of the room, they appeared excited, and one of them pointed toward the window, according to police reports.
A witness (whose name was redacted from the report) interviewed by police reported that the children had been held in the caged room for at least six months.
Wednesday afternoon, at the couple’s apartment complex off Andresen Road, Springfield Meadows, neighbors said they occasionally heard children screaming but never saw the kids come outside.
One upstairs neighbor said the family were “really bad neighbors” and that the children’s screaming was always followed by the mother’s yelling.
Eckhart is listed in court papers as unemployed; a search for his Facebook page displays a picture of him making an obscene gesture.
Higdon is listed as a student at Clark College in elementary education and was part of a work-study program that sporadically placed her as a volunteer in the library at Harney Elementary School, said Vancouver Public Schools spokeswoman Kris Sork.
According to court documents, the couple lives off food stamps and $1,160 in welfare a month.
The couple’s family is blended, with the autistic boys belonging to Eckhart and the 9-year-old belonging to Higdon, according to police reports. They are the parents of the 11-month-old.
At their first appearance Wednesday, the judge appointed attorney Robert Vukanovich to represent Eckhart and attorney Clark Fridley to represent Higdon.
The pair are expected to be arraigned on charges April 27.

Reading that article, I had to prevent myself from screaming.
I’m so goddamn tired of seing this, it makes my freakin’ blood boil.
What pisses me off even more is this part of the article.

What am I supposed to do?” he asked police. “Let them run around the house? What kind of (expletive) parenting is that? They are both autistic.”

what the hell kind of an excuse is that?
Really?
and I’ve been
accused
of being a safety risk to kids?
Seriously?
Need I
remind
you that I know a parent who’s child’s autistic, blind, and nonverbal?
Does that kind of crap happen? Hell fucking know!
It’s stories like this that drive my willingness to protect the innocence of children, especially children like those shown in the story above.
and you want to let these people roam the street on araignment?
If I’m remembering my termonology correctly, is that not the same as bail?
Or maybe that word in my pissed off state was miss-read and I’m having a problem remembering the deffinition correctly.
feel free to comment and set me straight.

Filed Under: articles, children, my child, people needing a clue, rants

random thoughts and feelings

September 30, 2009 by stickbear 3 Comments

This entry isn’t a normal happy entry. it’s mostly gonna be rambling and has no order to it what so ever. Some parts may not even make sense but I just needed to write my feelings.
If you don’t like, stop reading, right the fuck now.
So I went downtown today to do monthly banking, bills, the usual shit, and thought, fine, I’ll see if I could track down kerri, and she could make this go a hell of a lot faster. Oh, I found kerri, all right, but who was she with? Fuckin’ josh! She ended up guiding me to the nearist TD, with josh and his snide comments all the way… things like, don’t touch my kid, keep your hands off, shit like that. It took everything I had not to turn around and belt him upside his fucking head with my cane. I’ve been more of a daddy to that child than he’ll ever be, I’ve made kerri happier for it, but josh doesn’t seem to fucking give up. Anyhow, I asked kerri if she was going to meet me back at TD so I could spend time with her and *my* child, but when I came out, she wasn’t their, come to find out josh had hauled her off to who knows where. Ended up catching up with her at jackson for a breef 30 seconds, because josh, probably thinking I was incompitent wants to feed her. Even though I’d said to her I’d take her to get something to eat. Needless to say after I grabbed something to eat I had to get assistance home, because my focus went to hell, I couldn’t concintrate to save myself. A nice gentlemen ended up giving me a ride because I think he saw my distress and inability to focus. I am now home, but I sit here asking myself, Am I wrong to feel left out? Am I wrong to feel like today was a waste of time? Am I a moron to think I’m doing the right thing? Why everytime I see kerri with josh do I have this inexplicable urge to strangle the fuck out of josh consiquences be damned? I understand josh is the baby daddy, but frankly, if he died I’d probably be happy for it as I know what he put kerri through and he deserves to be dead. I just don’t know, I know where her loyalties, kerri’s loyalties lie, but their’s still a part of me going, shane? You’ve been screwed before. This only happens when I know she’s with josh or I see josh with her downtown. I’m so afraid, so insecure right now it’s scary. I feel like I’m falling again, and nobody can catch me. I know who I love, but everytime I see sperm donnor I wonder, is he going to attempt to fill her brain with shit, and cause her to leave? I know this isn’t true, but my brain still thinks it.
ok, I’m done for now.
Sorry about the unorderlyness of this entry.
Before I go, everyone who knows me knows who I love, and who I want to marry, who’s child I call my own, and who I’ll give my life for if it means her and that child survive. That child may not be my own biologically but blood aside, he’s my child, and nobody will change that.
I will try and come up with something with more substance in it at another time.

Filed Under: feelings, general ranting, josh, kerri, my child, opinion, personal life, relationship, relationships, shane, Uncategorized

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