Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => The Troubled Teen Industry => Topic started by: Anonymous on July 09, 2007, 06:04:08 PM
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South Toledo dad to be evaluated in abuse case
http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar ... 3/70619034 (http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070619/NEWS03/70619034)
By ERICA BLAKE
BLADE STAFF WRITER
A South Toledo man charged with locking his two young sons in cages will be evaluated to determine if he is competent to stand trial on charges of child endangering, a Lucas County Common Pleas Court judge said yesterday.
John Westover, 37, was ordered to be evaluated at the Lucas County Court Diagnostic and Treatment Center. Judge Linda Jennings then set a July 17 competency hearing.
Westover and his girlfriend, Jessica Botzko, 28, both of 3019 Nebraska Ave., Lot 22, were each charged with two counts of child endangering and one count of possessing criminal tools. If convicted, each faces a maximum of 11 years in prison.
Authorities said they kept their children, ages 5 and 10, in small cages and used an animal-training collar to shock the older one.
“To see if he is competent to stand trial and understand the process,” defense attorney Jack Viren said of his request for a competency evaluation.
Mr. Viren was appointed to represent Westover after attorney Debbie Rump was disqualified because she serves as a magistrate in Maumee Municipal Court where Westover also faces charges. He had been charged with misdemeanor child endangerment after Maumee police found the children living in squalor in a Dussel Drive motel in 2003.
Mr. Viren also asked for a competency hearing to determine if the older boy was able to testify in a trial and yesterday filed a motion to separate the trials for Westover and Ms. Botzko.
Attorney Ann Baronas, who represents Ms. Botzko, agreed that the cases “have to be severed.” She added that she is still looking at the state’s evidence in the case.
Both Westover and Ms. Botzko are being held in the Lucas County jail in lieu of $225,000 bonds each.
Lucas County Children Services has placed their sons in foster care.
The boys fled their mobile home May 1 and went to a house in the 300 block of Westwood Avenue to escape being locked in cages and, for the older boy, being shocked, police said.
Police arrested their parents the next day and seized a small wire cage with chain and padlocks in their home. Police said the boys were in cages as a form of punishment and during times when their father was involved in drugs.
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The similarities between the way these parents treated their children and program parents pay other people to treat them is remarkable. If these parents had enough money to pay someone else cages and collars would be accepted behavior modification method (both documented on fornits). It's ironic this country holds programs to a lower standard than these crack-head parents. Maybe it is the economic divide? If you have enough money to pay others to do it, you can act like you are outraged if your kid asks questions or the abusers are caught red handed (the only way anyone will ever believe it)? Don't they call this plausible deniability?
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I fapped to that.