Mom who caged teen son gets 20 years behind bars

[madinmaryland]

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/05/23/caged.teen.ap/index.html

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) -- A mother was sentenced to 20 years in prison Thursday for keeping her 17-year-old adopted son caged in her home.

Brenda Sullivan pleaded guilty in January to three counts of aggravated child abuse. Prosecutors agreed to drop lesser child neglect charges.

The teen weighed 49 pounds when child welfare workers found him in 2005 in what appeared to be a cage. Sullivan told a judge at the time that Ohio authorities told her to keep the boy, who had severe medical and emotional problems, in a crib.

"There's only one conclusion when you look at the medical evidence in this case, and that is that she literally starved him," prosecutor Julie Schlax said

..snip

:wtf: is wrong with people!

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. 20 years on a plea bargain?

She would have done better with no lawyer at all.

[saltpoint]

2. In another life, this woman may have been the stepmother in

Hansel & Gretel, the 'parent' who urges her husband to take the two younguns out into the deep woods and leave them for the wolves.