Jon Benet Ramsey

Jon Benet Ramsey would be 23 years old this year.  Her mother died in 2006 of ovarian cancer, and her father has since remarried moving on with his life.  It is a little known fact the child beauty queen's parents should have been indicted.  When the older brother reached adult age, there were rumors and rumblings that he had commited the murder and how could anyone be expected to lose both children to a horrible crime.  Eventually, the prosecutors took the case to a Grand Jury who found sufficient evidence to charge John and Patsy Ramsey with child abuse and murder of the young girl.  In 1996, we all watched as her parents insisted it was an intruder.  The District Attorney decided that there was not enough evidence to pursue the prosecution of the Ramseys.  That opens a big can of worms.  How much money did he waste taking it to the Grand Jury to get an indictment that he didn't want in the first place?  The Ramseys were a wealthy couple.  Was freedom for sale after the murder of a little girl?  The Jon Benet case of course sparked a huge controversy over child beauty pagents, but was the media too focused on the beauty pagents instead of the abuse?  This case shouldn't have been about whether Patsy Ramsey was trying to live out some sick dream through her child.  Newsflash, we all want our children to exceed and succeed at something that we couldn't.  We can focus on the falacies of that all we want, because it takes the bite away from what we really should have been focused on.  CHILD ABUSE.  Parents kill their children almost daily.  Researchers estimate 250 to 300 children are murdered by their parents every year in the United States.  This number doesn't include spouses or significant others of parents or other family members--siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, stepbrothers or sisters.  BUT that number is laughable.  The true estimates are far more shocking.

How much does that number go up?  Here's where it gets tricky.  No one really knows.  The Children's Defense Fund which is a group that is actually supposed to be worried about this statistic and child abuse is now spending more time and money on the current anti-gun movement in this country.  A colossal waste of money and resources when you consider that the most common method of suicide in this country is hanging/suffrocation.  Plus with the United States just over 3900 suicides per year (adults included), we actually rank 34th in the world for suicides.  Japan, China, South Korea are in the Top 10.  Even Brazil has a higher suicide rate than the United States.  And the UK, who's rate is often tooted off as one of the lowest in the world is ranked 38th.  Considering the statistics, focusing on a child committing suicide with a gun over the abuse problem in our country is ridiculous. 

Of course, there are no true statistics for children killed by supposed loved ones in this country.  We know that an estimated 6 MILLION children are abused per year.  We know that 80% of the children that die under the age of 4 die from abuse or neglect.  Based on proven cases of abuse, we know that almost 6 children a day die from abuse in the United States.  That takes that previous pulled out of someone's rectum number from 300-ish to almost 2200 children murdered a year through abuse.  This is the worst record for any industrialized country.  The United States are #1 for number of children dying from abuse of the "civilized" world.  Additionally, there are no statistics for children that commit suicide during their teen years because of severe abuse or neglect during their youth.  How many of that almost 3900 suicides might never happen if we could resolve the abuse issue?  Even if we don't include the count of suicides due to abuse and neglect, we set ourselves a cut above every other non-third world country in failing our abused children miserably. 

In a study conducted of 9 months of court documentation, 75 children were murdered between the summer of 2009 and spring 2010 by their fathers involved in custody and/or visitation cases.  Yet, consider that 70% of all children murdered by a parent are murdered by their mothers (study conducted on known parental murders between 2001 to 2006).  Let's do the math:  that means in the same 9 month period 257 children were murdered by their mothers.  What this should tell us is that the published statistics are short by quite a bit.  Afterall, the 75 count is only for fathers in court battles that were documented.  The 332 total then for the 9 months could be significantly higher when considering non-court battle documented deaths--which is more common, of course.  Still, that would ONLY count parents, NOT custodial guardians, grandparents or other family members, or significant others not assisting or assisted by a parent. 

FACTS: 

Most children are not killed by guns.  The most common death for a child in this country is to be beaten to death--either over several days, weeks or months or in one spurt.  Typically, the one spurt had been preceded by months of abuse, although not contributing to the fatal abuse. 

An estimated 30% of abused children will become abusers themselves, and 36% of women and 14% of men in prison were abused as children.

More shocking, 80% of 21 year olds that suffer from psychological disorders were abused as children.  

The estimated cost for child abuse and neglect in this country: $124 BILLION a year.   That of course doesn't include the court costs or investigations after the children are dead.  It doesn't include the costs of incarcination after the fact either.  It also surprisingly doesn't include foster care.  All it includes is how much the states spend on social workers and programs.  What a f*cking joke, excuse my "french". 

WHAT WE HAVE IS AN EPIDEMIC IN THIS COUNTRY where the people that we have investigating will go to great lengths to investigate non-starters.  Probably because it's easier to investigate the non-starters and get them off their to-do list.  Plus, it's going to be far less heart-breaking to investigate a child that got slapped for cussing at his mother.  So, when there are muliple complaints and the investigators find the child chained to a tree, they still leave a little girl to eventually be brutally murdered.  We know that there are children who get spanked and probably deserve it.  There is a lot of truth in "spare the rod, spoil the child", but spankings are not abuse.  Broken arms, collarbones, regular bruising in excess...these are neon signs.  Yet, we do nothing to prevent it.  Courts routinely turn children over to family members--with knowledge of previous abuse, because our laws allow known abusers to have a second chance at abusing someone that they have already placed the fear of God into. 

For those that think guns kill people, well, I'll concede it is one way.  For those that think guns kill children, think again.  We get so hell bent on the quick answer, we don't bother to ask why. We love to go after the small potatoes, grab some signs and take up what we perceive will produce a tangible win. Get the guns--even though guns are not the leading cause of suicide or even murdered children. NEGLECT AND PHYSICAL ABUSE ARE THE LEADING CAUSE OF CHILDREN'S DEATHS IN THE UNITED STATES, and that's not including a likely large percentage of the teen suicides.  The case of Jon Benet Ramsey should've been a wake up call.  Instead, it's a blip in most of our memories.  A laughable moment where a woman paraded her daughter around like a prostitute.  It wasn't laughable.  It was a crazy woman who murdered her daughter and got away with it because they had money.  What's laughable is we will go into an outrage over one shooting of 26 innocents, but bypass the 2200 plus children that are murdered by their families every year. 


***REMEMBER THE INNOCENT, NOT THE GUILTY***

NOTE:  It was far more difficult to find the innocents' names than the perpetrators.  What is wrong with us?   

STEPHANIE CARTER, 4, murdered by her stepmother after being chained to a tree and severely neglected after her father remarried.  Her mother had passed away from lupis in 1998.  2000

KELSEY BRIGGS, 2, beaten to death by her stepfather after several months of documented child abuse including a broken collarbone, broken legs, and multiple bruises and abrasions. 2005

TANNER LEE WEBB, 3, beaten to death by his stepfather, again after several months of documented abuse.  2006

LUCAS WEBB, 4, beaten to death by his mother and stepfather. 2012

BRADEN and CHARLES POWELL, 5 and 7, axed to death by their father while in a custody battle with their grandparents after he killed their mother in 2006 which couldn't be proven at the time.  2008

LUKE AND GATLIN ARMANDIAZ, 6 months and 2, hung by their father. 2011

BABYBOY GORE, 7 months, suspected to have been murdered by his parents 2007.  No one turned the parents in for the missing child.  Virginia investigators eventually discovered their 6 year old daughter caged.  She had been caged for at least 1 year.  She would've been 2 when her brother was killed.  His body was discovered buried in the backyard. 2011

CAYLEE ANTHONY, 2, by her mother. 2011 (her mother was acquitted)

NOAH, JOHN, PAUL, LUKE and MARY YATES, 7, 5, 3, under 2, and under 1, drowned by their mother.  Notice the bible thumping names--just because they say they're Christian parents doesn't mean they are.  2001

CHRISTOPHER CONAN MILKE, 4, murdered by her mother's accomplice in his kidnapping. 1990.

BABYBOY BERRY, newborn, suffrocated by his mother. 1998

DURENROSTRO CHILDREN, 2 girls and a boy, 4, 9 and 8 respectively, murdered by their mother. 1994

CHRISTOPHER, MICHAEL, and XAVIER SOCORRO, 5, 8 and 11, murdered by their mother. 1996

TAUSHA LEE LANHAM, 7, starved to death by her mother. 1998

DARREN and his sister DAIL-ZSHIA TORRES, 6 and 4, stabbed to death by their grandmother, 1993.

SERENITY DEAL, 5, beaten to death by her father.  2011

CAMDEN HUGHES, 6, strangled to death by his mother.  2011

VYCTORYA SANDOVAL, 2, beaten to death by her parents after being returned to her parents from foster care.  The foster mother begged the court not to return the child.  2011

EMILY and LAUREN Kahler, 16 and 18, murdered by their father along with their mother and grandmother.  2009

WYATT GARCIA, 9 months, murdered by his father.  2010

TEIGEN PETERS BROWN, 3, shot during a court-ordered visit by his father.  2009

BEKM BACON, 8 months, killed by his father.  2010

JANIYAH NICOLE HALE, 1, killed by her father, a registered sex offender during visitation.  2009

VINICIUS and THAIS OLIVEIRA, 6 and 19 months, murdered by their mother with an angle grinder.  2006

MICHAEL DANIEL and ALEXANDER TYLER SMITH, 3 and 14 months, drowned by their mother.  1994

JOEL, JAZZLYN, JAXS, and PEBBLES JOHNSON, 12, 13, 15, and 17, shot by their mother.  2007

CHRISTOPHER MICHAEL BARRIOS, 6, tortured to death by a convicted sex offender and his parents.  2007

BRADLEY and EDWARD GARCIA, 3 and 1, stabbed to death by their father.  2011

PAIGE, LOGAN, and MADALYN HAYES, 10, 6, and 5, suffrocated in a garage with exhaust fumes by their grandmother in a murder-suicide.   2012