Diary Released of Boy Who Was Confined to Cage and Murdered

For some strange reason I thought this had been posted already, but I searched and didn't see it. Guess I must have confused it with all those other stories of abused children who are locked up in cages. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Caged and doomed, boy leaves sad account of his life

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The body of a boy named Christian Choate, 13, had been found encased in cement and buried in a shallow grave in Lake County, Indiana. Police and prosecutors there alleged that he had been forced to live in a dog cage, and was kept naked except for a diaper. They alleged that his father, Riley Lowell Choate, 39, and his stepmother, Kimberly Leona Kubina, 45, had regularly beaten and kicked the boy, deprived him of food, and chained his hands to the top of the cage.

Why does it seem so common for crazy parents to keep their children in cages?

Quote :

One of the most saddening aspects of the case is that Christian was killed more than two years before his body was found in May, yet during all that time, according to police investigators, there is no indication that anyone was looking for him. He had been pulled out of school long ago, so there were no teachers who wondered where he might be. The state of Indiana did not have an investigation of his family open at the time of his death and disappearance; the state's child protective agency had no idea he was gone.

Well, we can't possibly blame CPS for every single case of child neglect, discovered after the fact. How were they supposed to know...?

Quote :

It turns out that child-protection workers had investigated the family numerous times for more than a decade, beginning even before Christian was born. They had received repeated telephoned complaints -- presumably from neighbors and acquaintances -- about what was being done to the children in that home, according to the records. Many of the allegations were judged to be "unsubstantiated"

Nevermind...

Quote :

According to the court-released documents, the last time child-protection workers had contact with him was on June 30, 2008. They had received a call alleging that a 12-year-old boy was being kept "on house arrest." This was during the period in which Christian was locked in the dog cage. A worker had gone to the home and had "observed all children and stated they appeared to be doing well" and that there was "not a 12-year-old-boy on house arrest." The allegation that had come in was deemed "unsubstantiated."

I...I can't even come up with something sarcastic about this. How do you not notice a little boy in a cage?

Quote :

The almost unbearable part of the reports released by the court late last month is an account of letters that investigators say Christian had written while in the cage. While other children in the family were outside playing, he allegedly was told to write his thoughts down. The records indicate that his stepmother, in ordering him to do this, seemed especially sadistic; the topics she assigned him included "Why do you still want to see your mom?" and "Why can't you let the past go?"

...The crazy parents' guide to homeschooling?

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The report concluded: "The writings go on and on of how isolated and sad Christian was on a daily basis."

In perhaps the most haunting sentence in the report, investigators said:

"Christian's writings detail a very sad, depressed child who often wondered when someone, anyone, was going to come check on him and give him food or liquid."

I really don't want to turn this into another "hate on CPS" discussion, but seriously...what the fuck?! If this isn't a godawful failure at doing your job then I don't know what is.

Owlish wrote:

I...I can't even come up with something sarcastic about this. How do you not notice a little boy in a cage?

Yes, because the boy was in a cage right there in the living room where anyone could walk in and see him.

Have some fucking sense, would you?

You'd think someone would have gotten suspicious if they tried to go down into the basement and the parents said "No no no! There's, um, nothing down there! That's right! It's completely empty! So don't go down there!"

EileenK98 wrote:

You'd think someone would have gotten suspicious if they tried to go down into the basement and the parents said "No no no! There's, um, nothing down there! That's right! It's completely empty! So don't go down there!"

Or maybe there was no obvious reason for the CPS worker to go into the basement. Maybe the worker didn't know there was a basement. If CPS have been calling on this family for ten years, the parents learned just what to do to make the worker go away without any hard evidence of abuse.

Cyberwulf wrote:

EileenK98 wrote:

You'd think someone would have gotten suspicious if they tried to go down into the basement and the parents said "No no no! There's, um, nothing down there! That's right! It's completely empty! So don't go down there!"

Or maybe there was no obvious reason for the CPS worker to go into the basement. Maybe the worker didn't know there was a basement. If CPS have been calling on this family for ten years, the parents learned just what to do to make the worker go away without any hard evidence of abuse.

I see what both of you are saying. CPS would likely have had to literally turn this family's house/property inside out looking for the evidence they needed. If they would have looked hard enough they likely would have found it. However, to look as hard as they probably needed to, they would have needed to assume that the family was hiding something (essentially labeling them as "guilty - or at least suspicious - until proven innocent", rather than "innocent until proven guilty") and turn the place over with a vengeance, which would probably be illegal, or impossible with the manpower/budget problems that a lot of CPS agencies have.

There were clearly a lot of things that went wrong here and how the CPS handled it was just one of them.

And this is why home-schooling is bad.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

And this is why home-schooling is bad.

Homeschooling=/=child abuse.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

And this is why home-schooling is bad.

No, this is why homeschooling needs to be managed by the authorities. Homeschooling isn't quite the same as just leaving the parents to get on with it.

Cyberwulf wrote:

EileenK98 wrote:

You'd think someone would have gotten suspicious if they tried to go down into the basement and the parents said "No no no! There's, um, nothing down there! That's right! It's completely empty! So don't go down there!"

Or maybe there was no obvious reason for the CPS worker to go into the basement. Maybe the worker didn't know there was a basement. If CPS have been calling on this family for ten years, the parents learned just what to do to make the worker go away without any hard evidence of abuse.

Wouldn't the CPS worker have had a list of all children supposed to be living with the family, with the family being required to present all those children non-caged and healthy-looking?

If you check on the family and don't see all the children, that's not a real check.

Notanoni wrote:

Wouldn't the CPS worker have had a list of all children supposed to be living with the family, with the family being required to present all those children non-caged and healthy-looking?

Maybe they told them the child had gone to another relation's house?

Here's a suggestion: maybe this family were lying liars who lied about where the child in question was.

I don't suppose CPS workers have carte blanche to search a house and outbuildings just in case a child they couldn't see and the parents said was absent for some reason is held in a cage somewhere. Not without a search warrant and a bloody good reason for getting one.

There's a presumption in most Western countries, and over most of the world, that a householder is entitled to live their lives unencumbered by random searches just in case they might be doing something illegal - and that applies even when their relatives and neighbours make a fuss about the way they live their lives. Hence the occasional case like this, and the strange cases one comes across where Granny dies and the family omit the burial, leave her corpse in the back room and go on claiming her welfare cheque, or where someone's a hoarder and dies in the property at which point it's discovered that they're surrounded in cat corpses. (I remember seeing on TV a case where a hoarder died and there turned out to be a dead horse in the back of the property.)

Cases like this are very sad, but I don't think CPS did anything unreasonable here. The people to blame for the child's death are the parents, and no-one else.

Harley really has a bug up her butt about the whole homeschooling thing lately. Did one of those meanie homeschool kids beat you up, Harley-kins?

I would like to inform everyone on this board of some very magical facts:

CPS is not omnipotent, or well-funded, or very powerful at all. They are in fact understaffed, and are cut off at almost every turn whenever they try to do something. The files they are given are often lacking details, the different facilities aren't networked half the time, which means they have no idea what exactly the details of the previous inspection were, and there's been more than one occasion where a parent decided to go under a different name (Such as a maiden name, a stepfather's, etc.) after CPS busted them before, and guess what? That name might not be in their system as an "also known as".

CPS is full of people who do their best with what they're given. There are the morons who are burnt out, or are so amoral they take bribes and look the other way, but those fuckers end up in every profession. But it's not fair to blame the whole system, especially not when the people who deserve the most blame (but are noticeably absent so far) are the parents who did this.

Seriously, they deserve to rot in a cage of their own for the rest of their natural lives.

But if you want CPS to be more effective, campaign for a better budget for them, volunteer with them, get a job with them.

Lexin wrote:

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

And this is why home-schooling is bad.

No, this is why homeschooling needs to be managed by the authorities. Homeschooling isn't quite the same as just leaving the parents to get on with it.

There really isn't much of a point if it's "managed by the authorities" since it's usually used as an alternative to schools that the parents deem ill-suited to teaching their children, and if the authorities can't manage their own institutions well, they probably won't be able to do it at all with private individuals.

Penguin wrote:

Lexin wrote:

No, this is why homeschooling needs to be managed by the authorities. Homeschooling isn't quite the same as just leaving the parents to get on with it.

There really isn't much of a point if it's "managed by the authorities" since it's usually used as an alternative to schools that the parents deem ill-suited to teaching their children, and if the authorities can't manage their own institutions well, they probably won't be able to do it at all with private individuals.

I don't know what the situation is in the US, but in the UK the local authorities keep very careful records of people who are homeschooling, and check that they are actually schooling their children. There is no question of the parents being left alone without oversight.

Lexin wrote:

Notanoni wrote:

Wouldn't the CPS worker have had a list of all children supposed to be living with the family, with the family being required to present all those children non-caged and healthy-looking?

Maybe they told them the child had gone to another relation's house?

Here's a suggestion: maybe this family were lying liars who lied about where the child in question was.

I don't suppose CPS workers have carte blanche to search a house and outbuildings just in case a child they couldn't see and the parents said was absent for some reason is held in a cage somewhere. Not without a search warrant and a bloody good reason for getting one.

There's a presumption in most Western countries, and over most of the world, that a householder is entitled to live their lives unencumbered by random searches just in case they might be doing something illegal - and that applies even when their relatives and neighbours make a fuss about the way they live their lives. Hence the occasional case like this, and the strange cases one comes across where Granny dies and the family omit the burial, leave her corpse in the back room and go on claiming her welfare cheque, or where someone's a hoarder and dies in the property at which point it's discovered that they're surrounded in cat corpses. (I remember seeing on TV a case where a hoarder died and there turned out to be a dead horse in the back of the property.)

Cases like this are very sad, but I don't think CPS did anything unreasonable here. The people to blame for the child's death are the parents, and no-one else.

This has nothing to do with my point.

My point is that "check on a child" means just that. It doesn't mean CPS needed a search warrant. It simply means that, in order to honestly say you'd checked on a child reported to be in danger, you would need to actually see that child in a situation that is looking as if they're not in danger.

If parents were being obstructionist or saying the child was elsewhere, then the report shouldn't have said that all children were fine. The report should have said that some children were fine and that one was unaccounted for.

Making a report when you have no current first-hand knowledge of what you're making the report about would be like a firefighter being asked to check if a certain building is on fire, but instead of actually checking they just look on Google Maps' street view and see a building that isn't on fire and say it's okay.

Checking means actually looking. If looking is impossible, then that fact should at least be noted on the report.

If CPS didn't produce an honest report, then they are partially at fault.

In many cases like this, the problem is that the CPS worker goes, and the child has been brought out of whatever horrible circumstances xe is usually in, and presented all cleaned up and too terrified to say anything is wrong. You have to remember that the sort of people who get away with things like this, in most cases, are very, very good at showing CPS exactly what they want to see. Even if the worker has a feeling that something is wrong, there's not just a whole lot they can do in many places. What exactly they are allowed to do in a situation like that varies by state.

The other thing to remember about CPS is that we don't hear all the times when it works out adequately, or well, only horrible cases like this one, or cases when they took a child from a home xe should have been left in.

It looks like in this case, Christian was cleaned up and dressed, and told exactly what to say the the worker. As the article itself states:

Quote :

A child who is beaten and caged is likely to be terrified of his so-called guardians; if a caseworker comes into the home, the child likely knows that if he says the wrong thing, he will face more brutality when the caseworker leaves and he is alone to face his tormentors once again.

Throw in an underfunded staff, one that simply does not have the resources, and you get cases like this. People start screaming about how horrible DHS/CPS is, without ever addressing the problems CPS faces. Hell, here in Arkansas, the people in charge of CPS? Are not real social workers. They are random appointees by the governor, who may or may not have any experience at all in that position.

Lexin wrote:

I don't know what the situation is in the US,

It probably varies by state. We are basically like 50 seperate countries over here.

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

And this is why home-schooling is bad.

Interesting story: both my brothers were homeschooled. One just got his bachelor's degree in History and a teaching certificate, and the other is now apprenticing as a luthier.

The one gearing up to be a history teacher - he was bullied so bad in public school that he was incapable of concentrating on his classes because he had to defend himself all the time. He also has an impairment that makes it very difficult to produce written language - which means that anything he writes comes out an incoherent babble, but have him speak on the same topic and you'd be wowed by the depth of his knowledge. Public school isn't flexible enough to deal with a student that has to give his final exams orally or who fails every spelling test.

My other brother has ADD - and was bullied for being outspoken on his views of religion. (He's a self-proclaimed Buddhist Atheist.) He got into a brawl with some kids calling Muslims "towelheads". It got so bad that they had to have him going to recess separately. He also had been playing the violin since he was 7, and there was no place for him in the school band. Because he was homeschooled, he was able to spend more time playing his fiddle and learning how to make them. He got his current position as an apprentice at a luthier's shop because he'd already started making instruments on his own.

If my parents hadn't decided to pull my brothers out of public school, they wouldn't be starting their careers now.

Harley, you are an idiot. Please don't comment on something that you are clearly ignorant of.

I think what both I_Lam and Harley need to remember is that Statistic is not the plural of Anecdote.

But Harley's still an idiot.

William Shakespeare wrote:

I think what both I_Lam and Harley need to remember is that Statistic is not the plural of Anecdote.

My point was that public school isn't for everyone, and sometimes getting out of homeschool is the best option. In this case, statistics weren't the point.

My parents and a few of our neighbors got together to homeschool their children together. Our nextdoor neighbor did English and history classes, her mother did theology classes, my dad did mathematics and physics classes, and my mom did biology. They brought in a teacher for Spanish too. They all had children with varying reasons for their difficulties fitting into public school. They needed one-on-one attention, which is something that public schools can't do.

In our case, there was a bunch of parents who wanted their children to have decent educations, but knew it wouldn't happen at public school.

My sister has homeschooled her son for three years and will be starting the fourth year in September. Before that he went to a private school. This works best for them. He's smart, motivated, and gets to do fun experiments and go on fun field trips he otherwise wouldn't be able to. They're part of a homeschooling group.
I don't know how it is elsewhere, but she uses an approved homeschool service and when he's old enough, he will have to take a skills and knowledge test just like if he was in a public school.

William Shakespeare wrote:

I think what both I_Lam and Harley need to remember is that Statistic is not the plural of Anecdote.

But Harley's still an idiot.

What about I_Lam then, mister 17 posts?

Harley Quinn hyenaholic wrote:

William Shakespeare wrote:

I think what both I_Lam and Harley need to remember is that Statistic is not the plural of Anecdote.

But Harley's still an idiot.

What about I_Lam then, mister 17 posts?

And I'm sure all 17 of those posts offered a greater value to this forum than every single post you've made since GAFF.

How did this turned into home schooling warbbl warbbl?

I was home schooled, you're not really being taught by your parents, but rather you log in, do your assignments and then pay WoW for 6 hours straight. I attended a public home school program that had field trips and teachers that would check up on you ever so often.

The boy in OP was clearly not being home schooled at all.

/derail

CPS needs to change drastically.

XLT-100852.0 wrote:

How did this turned into home schooling warbbl warbbl?

I was home schooled, you're not really being taught by your parents, but rather you log in, do your assignments and then pay WoW for 6 hours straight. I attended a public home school program that had field trips and teachers that would check up on you ever so often.

That doesn't sound like homeschooling. That sounds like online school. My district has one of those. It's called Choice 2000.