'They were tied up in a bathtub': Transcript emerges of phone call to abuse hotline just four days b

[closeupready]

Source: The Daily Mail

Disturbing details have emerged of a phone call which warned a twin brother and sister were being abused, just four days before the little girl was found dead and the boy badly burned in their adoptive father's truck.

A school therapist told an abuse hotline the twins, ten-year-old Nubia and Victor Barahona, were sometimes kept tied up in the bathroom all day and all night as a punishment.

And early this morning investigators removed what appeared to be a bathtub from the house where they lived with their adoptive parents, Jorge and Carmen Barahona, in Miami-Dade, Florida.

Nubia's partially dissolved body was found in the back of her adoptive father's pest control truck on the side of the road in West Balm Beach on February 14.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361851/Transcript-emerges-phone-abuse-hotline-just-days-acid-attack-twins-Nubia-Victor-Barahona-found.html

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Sometimes, I want to withdraw from the world because of things like this. What kind of people do this?

My feelings about this kind of thing are hard to even talk about - anger, sadness, some things I feel that I don't even know the word for. :cry:

[WatsonT]

1. Awful

jeez. What's wrong with some people?

[ejpoeta]

2. my question is... .where the hell were the authorities!! they cut

caseworkers to check these things out and who ends up paying for it? kids like these ones. And before the teacher called the hotline, I wonder how many times people turned a blind eye to the abuse and didn't speak up or call the police

[Nevernose]

13. Underfunded, understaffed, and overworked.

CPS in a large county might get scores or even hundreds of calls in a single day (about a third of which are made up bullshit involving warring former spouses). It can take days in even the most extreme circumstances, because there are other extreme cases ahead in the line.

And, sometimes, the authorities just make human mistakes. A single caseworker might have hundreds of active cases, and there might not have ever been anything severe that was also provable in court before.

[ejpoeta]

15. I understand that. My point is that we need to have the people there

to protect the kids.There needs to be enough workers to do the job. Period!!

[shanti]

17. it's floriduh!

again

[nc4bo]

25. First report was in 2004. There is a long history here regarding the wellbeing of the children.

Since 2004!!! These kids were abused for 7 years and I don't care how understaffed an agency is, there is no excuse for this.

7 damn years of hell for these kids.

:cry:

[defendandprotect]

3. The more rightwing our society becomes, the more brutal -- and that includes every perversion...

with sexual slavery of women and youth on the rise across the globe and with pathways of

it within America --

This also impacts people on the edge in our society -- people who need help aren't getting

it from either our social services or our safety nets.

My first recommendation is that we get rid of the GOP voting computers!

[WatsonT]

4. Wow

you had to make it political?

This is the story of one person acting like a monster, no more, no less.

Children have, sadly, always been abused, in nations of every political stripe, by people falling in every conceivable political persuasion.

Don't make this about politics, it's unseemly.

[atreides1]

5. It may be unseemly

But if case workers were fired, because of budget cuts...it becomes political!

And seeing as it's the Republicans who are all about removing social programs that provide and protect the most vulnerable...politics may have played a major role in this incident as well as others.

Yes...it was the adoptive parents who destroyed the lives of these two children, directly...but indirectly it was politics that assisted...

[WatsonT]

9. Nonsense

this stuff happens in every state, regardless of who is in charge or what the dominate party is. The authorities just screwed up.

"It is poring over hundreds of documents from a six-year period during which the case was repeatedly brought to the attention of authorities"


6 years. That predates the current budget crises.

[Mojeoux]

10. "The Authorities Just Screwed Up" For 6 Years!!!!!

Of course these departments have been overworked and underpaid for-EVER!

It's time these jobs should be multiplied.
Here in California, one scumbag kept a kidnapped girl in a tent for 18 YEARS!

Of course the mistreatment of women and children has been swept under the rug for-EVER!

Only in the past 30 years have laws been adjusted to encompass child abuse, sexual abuse and domestic abuse.

Women aren't "touchy" or "overly sensitive" on these issues. We've watched abusers walk out of jail time after time.

[WatsonT]

11. I don't recall saying

anyone was 'touchy' or 'overly sensitive'.

So please don't put it it in quotes in response to me.

Thanks.

And child abuse, sexual abuse, and domestic abuse were all very much illegal prior to 1981.

[WatsonT]

12. Also, wouldn't the fact that it happened in CA

negate the argument that this is political?

CA has a much more generous policy to social spending than most states. Likewise it would be hard to describe the state as conservative.

And yet it happened there as well.

This isn't a republican/democrat thing. It's a decent human beings/scumbags thing.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

16. This is a greed thing, largely fueled by republicans

If you're not able to see where cuts in state funding have generally hurt children, with lots of repeated stories like this, then you're being willfully ignorant. You can't wrap this whole sad story in a package and lay it completely at the feet of republicans, true, but they certainly share some blame for permitting this sort of systemic behavior in story after story. You need to back away from the all-binary approach you've taken and admit you haven't really thought this through all the way.

[WatsonT]

23. This is disgusting

A normal person can see a tragedy like this and blame the perpetrator.

A hopeless fanatic can see it and blame their enemies.

Neo-nazi: it was the Jews who did this!
Klan member: damn Negroes are to blame!
Anarchist: the state is responsible!
Westboro Baptist church: damn queer murderers!
Several members here: Republicans!

Maybe you should go to the funeral and protest what the republicans did to this kid.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

28. glad to see I disgusted you

I don't frankly care that I disgusted you; you strike me as being of little or no consequence, and your attempt to make me a Nazi, klansman, anarchist, and Westboro church member is kind of sophomoric. Run along, little one. I listen to reasoned arguments, not to rightwing zealots who have demonstrated their basic ignorance. Bye now.

[WatsonT]

30. Your desire to turn a tragedy in to your own personal whipping boy

is what disgusted me.

Be sure to go protest the funeral so everyone knows the gays. .. no sorry republicans are to blame for this.

Have fun with your hate.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

32. As I said, you're of no consequence

go away, little fuckstain.

[WatsonT]

33. Well said mister phelps.

well said.

[Mojeoux]

21. We've had Repub Govs

a long time and the child sexual abuse funding has been been chipped away here in California since 1995.

The people who oversee the Foster Parent program, welfare caseworkers, all these departments have been cut.


It's only in the last 25 years that rape kits have been collected in the US, and the conviction record is a joke.

Who are the American leaders of misogyny? Of course it's the Right-Wing. Get Real.

[Dappleganger]

27. No, your posts show ignorance about the state of FL in this area.

FL has been under republican rule for well over a decade and has absolutely destroyed DCF in the process.

Kathleen Kearney, Jeb Bush--there's plenty out there in google land to read. Absolutely disgusting.

[WatsonT]

29. Right because these things occur only in republican states

my god the denial on here is intense.

Show evidence to back your claims. You are claiming a trend, substantiate it.

[ArcticFox]

6. It is political

Do we give priority to keeping people, vulnerable people safe and protected, or do we cut costs? here, a man was allowed to adopt some children, but the state devoted too few resources to ensure their safety (or even make it likely).

[defendandprotect]

20. Of course it is political --

Right wing has been leading us down the pathways to violence because it is

the only way the right wing can rise!

:)



http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4752766&mesg_id=4753297

[girl gone mad]

8. Of course it's political.

When a society values human rights over money, this abuse is less likely to be ignored.

[WatsonT]

24. Yeah because money was such a key factor in this case

the guy was rich so they let him off the hook.

:eyes:

[Dappleganger]

26. The Republicans in FL have destroyed DCF...

THEY are responsible for this tragedy on many different levels.

"Gov. Rick Scott's proposed budget lays off 1,849 Department of Children and Families employees and slices $278 million out of the agency that oversees homelessness and health care; substance abuse, domestic violence and mental health."

http://www2.tbo.com/content/2011/feb/09/091042/scotts-proposed-dcf-cuts-draw-concern/

[WatsonT]

31. So it should be easy to find an unbiased study

that correlates republican majorities to child abuse rates.

[emilyg]

14. This is not a political story.

[defendandprotect]

18. See DU OP today: "special-needs school in Canton that disciplines students with electric shocks"

I'll go find it for you!!


Torturing special needs school children !!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4751636&mesg_id=4751636


Who's setting the example -- who is violent?

What are our governments doing to set a better example --

What are our governments doing to stop violence --


Additionally, if you look at Boehner's violent comments about public employees

which is another OP here today -- which I'll also get for you -- you see how

the right wing forsters violence -- in their speech -- in their actions -- in their

budgets -- in their destruction of the economy and democracy.

However, it is the only way the right wing can rise -- on political violence!!

Here, ya go --

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x533332



Everything is political in the end -- everything begins on a spiritual plane before

it is enacted upon. Obviously, the right wing spirit is based in callousness, inhumanity,

brutality, torture and violence!

[libmom74]

7. it is people like

these monsters that make believe in the death penalty. I can't even impagine the torure those poor children had to endure over the 6 years that they lived in that house.

[defendandprotect]

19. Please notice ... it's rw leaders who renewed death penalty and TORTURE ....

because the only way the right wing can rise is via violence --

political violence/assassinations --

stolen elections -- lies

and WEALTH to buy it and keep it all covered up!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4752766&mesg_id=4753297

[Mojeoux]

22. Bingo!

It's atrocious that these kids had NO one, just teachers reporting neglect.
Over and over, it's just the worst.