An Indiana Christmas Tragedy

[XLFD]

You may have heard a story out of Indiana concerning a mother who had her two young kids get into Santa Claus' stash early, TV station WREG reported it thusly:

HANCOCK COUNTY, Ind. — An Indiana mother has been arrested and charged with abusing her children.

The mother hit them after they found their Christmas presents and unwrapped them, police said.

“If my granddaughter got into her things, I would just laugh and let her enjoy them, that is no reason to be violent with a child I don’t think,” neighbor Linda Duncan said.

But Duncan’s neighbor might not feel the same way. Court documents accuse 36-year-old Sascha Collins of hitting her two boys, ages 7 and 9, throwing one against the wall and hitting the kids with a belt after the boys got into Christmas presents kept in the closet Sunday.

“There were injuries to their arms and to their forearms and the stomach area of the child,” Hancock County prosecutor Brent Eaton said.

Prosecutors called the injuries superficial but said this far exceeded spanking. In court documents, Collins told investigators she doesn’t remember details, but she was picking up wrapping paper and yelling at them and hitting them.

“There’s no sense in that, I’d tell them Merry Christmas and let them have them, let them play with them,” Duncan said.

Collins pleaded not guilty to two felony charges of domestic battery in court this week.

“A child should never be hurt. We’ve had several people in this neighborhood who have had problems with their children and had them taken away. I’m just happy that CPS is involved,” Duncan said.

An attorney representing Collins declined to comment. Collins is due back in court in February.

http://wreg.com/2016/12/22/indiana-mom-charged-with-beating-kids-fo...

Other articles tell of the boys' older teenage sister coming home after leaving for 45 minutes and finding her mom complaining about her sons actions, then looking at and hearing the boys' accounts of what happened.  She alerted an adult nearby, perhaps the neighbor Linda Duncan, and set into motion what happened. 

And here's what likely will happen in the coming days and years.  The mother will likely get some hard jail time because of all the international media attention and the additional hoopla involved.  The kids, including the older sister, will likely be taken from the nice suburban house of Collins (pictured above) and put through the whims of the foster care system.

Will that be better for those kids?  Maybe; but consider that the mother of three had no previous problems with her kids or the justice system, was involved enough to get her boys presents for Christmas, and left nothing but superficial injuries to the children she disciplined should be marked in her favor. 

Will the system weigh these factors before they choose a future for the members of this family or will they think more like the neighbor and be happy that CPS is involved because a mother temporarily was angry enough to use corporal punishment on kids that should have known better? 

Perhaps when the neighbor explains that given the same situation she would have just laughed and let the kids play with their gifts is why we have kids growing up that think they can get away with anything without consequences, and so will eventually find themselves in the same correctional institutions as their mother. 

[Willy]

When I was a kid, and we snooped around and found some Christmas presents, those were presents we never received.  That taught us very quickly to wait until Christmas. Unless it is absolutely a safety situation for kids then it's not a good idea to involve CPS.

[stump]

There is no discipline done to kids nowadays, then one one gets spanked everyone gets upset. It's easy for someone else to say what they would do if that happened to them, but it didn't. I heard a teenage kid tell his dad, go ahead spank me , i'll have your ass thrown in jail. Well that's the problem, the system probably would.

[XLFD]

Why is it that the people who call for the severest punishments for this lady (up to 12 years and the loss of her kids) are the same people that most loudly proclaim that the superficial punishment this mother gave her kids was unacceptable?