Couple arrested after children forced to dig ditches

Associate Press ^ | March 14, 2002 | A/P Staff

[MeekOneGOP]

Couple arrested after children forced to dig ditches

03/14/2002

Associated Press

TYLER, Texas - Arrests of an East Texas couple followed accusations that they forced their four young children to dig ditches in subfreezing weather as punishment for sneaking food between meals.

Luis Guevera Sanchez, 31, and Melissa Dale Raynor, 32, were arrested last week in connection with felony child endangerment, Smith County Jail records show. Both were released this week after posting bond.

Child endangerment charges against the Lindale couple were forwarded Wednesday to the Smith County District Attorney.

The youngsters, ages 6, 10, 11 and 12, have been returned to the custody of their parents, but Child Protective Services is continuing to investigate, according to the Tyler Morning Telegraph's Thursday editions.

The children were punished for dipping their fingers into jar of peanut butter and sneaking cookies between meals, investigators said.

A CPS report filed on the case indicated the children had been subjected to "bizarre punishment," authorities said Wednesday.

Lindale officials acting on a welfare concern March 2 found the youngsters alone at night, monitored only by an in-home surveillance system.

"The children have been exposed to extreme weather, they are malnourished, meals have been withheld," Precinct 5 Constable Dennis Taylor told the newspaper. "The parents used cameras to make sure the kids weren't disobeying."

Authorities found the children sitting motionless on the floor at various points in the house after their parents went to the movies.

The children told authorities Sanchez imposed a variety of punishments, including digging in a wooded creek bottom about 200 yards from the house.

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Online at: http://www.dallasnews.com/texassouthwest/stories/031402dntexcouplearrest.371ae.html

[MeekOneGOP]

[Door Slams}
Husband: Honey, I'm home!
Wife: Did you remember to get the balls and chains??
Husband: Dang! I knew I forgot something!
Wife: It's ok, we still have this old surveillance camera to watch the kids while we're out!

[stuartcr]

My father used to make me mow the lawn in Florida in August, is that the same?

[Lokibob]

As a teenager, one of my kids got drunk. Next day, I got him up at 5 am, gave him a pair of sissors and told him to mow the grass. It took him 12 hours, in the heat. He never drank again.

Guess I was a bad dad.

[scholar]

My father used to make me mow the lawn in Florida in August, is that the same?

I don't think so--I am assuming you were not malnourished. I did lots of chores in my childhood home too, but I was never punished for sneaking some peanut butter and cookies.

[scholar]

"The children have been exposed to extreme weather, they are malnourished, meals have been withheld," ...

No--under the circumstances you describe, I don't think you were a Bad Dad. However, look at the circumstances of this case. Did you ever deprive your children of food?

[rudehost]

Ever heard of sending a child to bed without supper?

[Khepera]

Man why didn't we think of this?

[PoisedWoman]

gave him a pair of sissors and told him to mow the grass. It took him 12 hours, in the heat. He never drank again.

I think you're a genius!

[nothingnew]

their four young children to dig ditches in subfreezing weather

My wife says this sounds like a typical day where she grew up on a South Dakota ranch...except there were 10 children, and they are all honest and hard working adults now...oh well...

FMCDH!

[Boxsford]

Plus subfreezing weather could equal 31 degrees. Folks that's a down right balmy day where I live. Too many people just believe these newspapers because it's written in black and white. Just because it says the children were malnourished doesn't make it so.

[Melinator]

It sounds to me that the key question here is what do they mean by "malnourished". Sending a child to bed without supper, giving them chores to do and even spanking them are common sense and wholly acceptable disciplinary practises in my view. Starving them is not.

However, it is not unusual for a children's service agency to throw in "malnourished" as an allegation against parents when they are not really sure if they have "enough" to justify repossessing the Government's children and future slaves. I was a skinny kid, and I was expected to work my butt off in sub-zero temperatures (tending farm animals in an unheated barn), but I sure as heck was never "malnourished" - I just had a very high fitness and metabolism level.

[isthisnickcool]

I remember when I was a kid and we were visiting my uncle Bobby. Some man had become angry with his two children and had kicked them out of the car and was making them run in the ditch next to the car. One a very busy highway. He would drive ahead of them as they ran screaming trying to catch up. They were maybe 6 or 7 years old.

Uncle Bobby's house was right next to the road and he saw all of this. He walked out and told the kids to follow him. The man pulled over and started to cuss uncle Bobby out. Uncle Bobby told my dad to hang on to the kids. Bobby stepped into the house and seemed to instantly return with a Winchester rifle. Which he promptly stuck it in the man's gut and said he better pray because he had just a couple of seconds to live. After a couple of moments and after the man peed all over himself uncle Bobby said "now you know scared those kids are. If you ever do something like that again I'll find you and kill you".

Uncle Bobby was on a Underwater Demolitions team during WWII, a pipe fitter in the Middle East (he told me that the Arabs were crazy 20 years ago)and the kind of man that would stick his hand in a bucket of blue crabs and clean them while talking to you. Never looking in the bucket, or at the crabs. A man's man.

Uncle Bobby has been dead for many years. But I wish he would have been around to see what happened with these kids and maybe scare the pee out of the parents. By the way, the Winshester was not loaded, today it hangs on my study wall.

[ravingnutter]

I used to punish my daughter by making her move rocks to help clear off our property. We also dug ditches together, although that was not for punishment, but in an emergency situation to divert water away from the house during a flood. She actually had fun doing that, we ended up in a mud fight, I was cleaning mud out of my ears for a week, LOL!

[scholar]

Ever heard of sending a child to bed without supper?

Sending a child to be without supper on occasion does not make them "malnourished."

[dead]

However, it is not unusual for a children's service agency to throw in "malnourished" as an allegation against parents when they are not really sure if they have "enough" to justify repossessing the Government's children and future slaves.

And they’ll prove it in court after blood tests reveal a 10% deficiency from the national standard in their Vitamin B12 levels.

I don’t know what the case is here, but “malnourished” is a handy weapon for the statists to throw around.

[ikanakattara]

This business about "sitting on the floor at points around the room" sounds a lot like "mat training," which I read about years ago in ultra-pietistic homeschooling magazines. I think homeschooling writer Mary Pride mentions it in one of her books, too. Basically, you put the mat down on the floor, put the kid on it, and spank or switch him if he gets up or gets off of it. It was supposed to be some kind of homeschooling "mother's helper" - how to keep younger kids still "during home church" or when mother was trying to teach older kids.

[tsomer]

Hats off to Uncle Bobby.

[scholar]

I don’t know what the case is here, but “malnourished” is a handy weapon for the statists to throw around.

I understand what you are saying here, however the authorities just don't wander into a home without reason. Until evidence proves otherwise, I think we need to be on the side of the children. Geez I hope I don't sound like Hitlary.

[dead]

There is nowhere near enough information in this article to make a decision either way, but one of the easiest areas where the state can greatly overstep their bounds in the area of parenting.

If these kids are being seriously mistreated, I'm happy to see them taken away from their parents, but I won't take the state's word for it.