What Makes Me Really Angry

I bet I was not the only person who was shocked at hearing the news this morning of an alcoholic mother of 6 who was due to be judged today for forcing her children live in filth, malnutrition and even sexual abuse.

I can't help wondering why social services didn't take action sooner to remove the children from this monster: apparently this went on between 1998 and 2004; six years is a very long time in the life of a child (the youngest was said to be 6 and the oldest 15 when this started). I have read that the "mother" got financial help from a Catholic right-wing group in order to stop the children from being taken into care in 2000. I would like to know who are these people, I think they should be investigated in order to find out what was their motive for protecting the woman (I suspect the worst but I guess publishing my suspicions would be seen as libel).

The children were school-goers, so what did the school do to help them? As for doctors, I guess the poor kids were not brought to them very often (if ever). What about neighbours? Local people must have known what was going on; did the staff from the pubs the woman frequented just turn a blind eye? I just can't understand!

What angered me even further was that she was given a total of 10 sentences (fair enough) ranging from 18 months to 7 years of prison to run concurrently (not that fair)! Out of disbelief I had to check an online dictionary and yep, it means what it means: concurrently means that she only has to serve the longest prison sentence of the 10, so that "thing" (I can't bring myself to call her a mother or even a woman at this stage) will get off after serving only 7 years of jail? Let me remind you that that she has ruined the lives of 6 innocent children who might or might not recover from being treated horrifically by the person that would be normally protecting them from harm.

I hope the children get bucketfuls of counselling and that they can eventually regain their self-esteem and learn how to live as normal human beings, but if they don't, this leaves the country with a potential extra 6 sex-offenders.

Just as I thought, the depression card was outed at her trial; I am sorry but being depressed should NOT become an excuse for shortening a prison sentence . Genuine depression is a disease for which the persons affected should seek help but suffering from depression doesn't mean that you are allowed to hurt other people. I find that too many people use this disease to get out of their responsibilities: lock that woman up and throw away the key, she deserves a life sentence!

7 years? Come on judge, you can do better than that! Even if that animal gets all the abuse from other women at the prison that she deserves, 7 years of free rehab are far from being enough for destroying the lives of 6 children who lived in fear for over 6 years and will bear the consequences for long years to come.