[orionblamblam]

> Smith said the male youth --
with the consent of the mother

"Mother" being the teen getting whacked in the belly, yes?

[hopespringseternal]

Smith said the male youth -- with the consent of the mother -- hit the pregnant teen in the abdomen with a decorative-type wooden baseball bat every other day for three weeks.

Makes no sense in the context of the sentence (mother - teen) or the story (mother-child mass of tissue). If that is the reporter's meaning, he is the idiot.