child abuse

After Serious Reflection and Analysis, I Reached the Professional Opinion That This Couple Is Unethical

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

Tough one. (Kidding!)

In October 2023, a call to child welfare in Sissonville, West Virginia led authorities to a locked shed at the the home of Jeanne Kay Whitefeather, 62, and Donald Ray Lantz, 63. When they pried open the lock on the door, police found the couple’s 18-year-old daughter and her 16-year-old brother, both clad in filthy clothes, with a Port-a-Potty, no light, and no running water. One of the teens told police they had been locked in the barn without food for 12 hours, and had been forced to sleep on the concrete floor.

Police then broke into the main residence and discovered a 9-year-old girl, crying. Three hours later, Lantz arrived with an 11-year-old boy; Whitefeather soon followed with his 5-year-old sister. All five of the couple’s children were taken into custody by Child Protective Services as their parents were arrested. An investigation revealed that Lantz and Whitefeath had adopted the five black siblings in Minnesota, moved to a farm in Washington state in 2018, then moved to Sissonville in May of 2023.

The indictment stated that the couple targeted the five children because of they were black, and forced them into involuntary labor…slavery. Neighbors testified for the prosecution that they never saw the children playing but did see them standing in line and performing hard labor. The oldest daughter testified that most of their outdoor work took place at the family’s Washington farm, where some of them were forced to dig using only their bare hands. Testimony indicated that the children’s meals mostly consisted of peanut butter sandwiches at scheduled times.

Jeanne Kay Whitefeather was sentenced to 215 years in prison and Donald Lantz to 160 years after a jury found them guilty of forced labor, human trafficking, child abuse and neglect. “You brought these children to West Virginia, a place that I know as ‘almost heaven,’ and you put them in hell. This court will now put you in yours,” Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers told the defendants at their sentencing last week. “And may God have mercy on your souls. Because this court will not.”

In a humorous note to this horrible story, the couple’s attorneys approached some kind of record for desperate defense arguments. Their basic strategy was to claim the couple was just “overwhelmed,” and that being bad parents isn’t a crime. Whitefeather’s attorney, Mark Plants, said during closing arguments “These are farm people that do farm chores,” Plants said. “It wasn’t about race. It wasn’t about forced labor.”

Right. I don’t think that even qualifies as a “nice try.”

I would like to know how a couple is approved to adopt five children without rigorous screening. I know that it is desirable to keep siblings together if possible—they had been removed from their biological parents after being abused by them—but five seems excessive unless the adoptive family is named Kennedy or Warbucks.

‘OK, Maybe He Beats His Kid, But What Matters Is That He’s A Great Mayor’

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I’m paraphrasing there, just to be clear. The actual statement, from Atlantic City Mayor Marty Small’s lawyer referring to his client and his client’s wife being charged with child abuse, was this head-blower:

“In fact, since elected mayor, Mayor Small has faithfully discharged all the duties, responsibilities and obligations of his office. So there is no public element to this indictment. It is all about private family affairs within the Small household.”

You are wrong, Zealous Representation Breath, but nice try anyway. Small’s lawyer, Edwin Jacobs, was stressing that the indictment did not accuse Small of official misconduct in his role as mayor, as he tried to assist his client in avoiding the political backlash from the charges (which Small denies, of course). This is arguably justifiable nit-picking in defense of a client, but it is also the kind of technical lawyer-speak that makes the whole profession look slimy.

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Encore: “Regarding ‘Athlete A’….”

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

[I watched “Athlete A,” the infuriating Netflix documentary for the second time, and completely forgot that I had written about it here when it first came out. (I’m sure glad I checked.) It is gratifying, I guess that most of what I was prepared to write today was what I wrote in 2020. I was not, however, emphatic enough about the implications of the multi-level failures of ethics decency, responsibility and accountability that allowed this disaster to occur. For in addition to Larry Nassar, the sick, manipulative doctor who used his position to sexually molest hundreds of young girls for more than 20 years, this mass crime was inflicted by stunning corruption and cruelty by key officials in the U.S. Olympic Committee, gymnastic coaches, Michigan State officials (where Nassar worked when he wasn’t sexual assaulting female gymnasts) and—is this even shocking any more?—the FBI. Then there are the parents of the gymnasts, who shipped their daughters off to be cared for by strangers who often abused them.

I suppose this story bothered me more this week than it did in 2020 because we have finally learned the truth about the Russian collusion hoax, the multi-level failure of integrity and trust that marred the 2020 election, and the horrific betrayal by so many institutions that inflicted the pandemic lockdown on us with the incursion on basic liberties that it involved, the discovery that schools are secretly pushing their students into life-altering gender confusion, while Big Tech and social media platforms conspire with the government to censor speech. I confess that I am less inclined to look at the Larry Nassar scandal as an anomaly today than three years ago. Now I am thinking: if we can’t trust our institutions to have sufficient ethics alarms that their leaders and key personnel choose the health and welfare of young girls over power, profit and selfish personal agendas, how can we trust them at all?]

Athlete A,” the Netflix documentary that tells the awful story of USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar’s decades of sexually abusing young female gymnasts—perhaps as many as 500 of them—, how he was allowed to continue his crimes after complaints from parents and others, and the young women who finally sent him to prison with their testimony, is both disturbing and depressing. I watched it last night with my wife, who was horrified that she didn’t know the Nassar story.

Ethics Alarms wasn’t as much help as it should have been. Its first full post about the scandal was this one, which, in grand Ethics Alarms tradition, slammed the ethics of the judge who sentenced Nassar to 60 years in prison, essentially a “Stop making me defend Dr. Nassar!” post. I’ll stand by that post forever, but it didn’t help readers who are link averse to know the full extent of Nassar’s hobby of plunging his fingers and hands into the vaginas and anuses of trusting young girls while telling them that it was “therapy.”

The second full post, in August of last year,  was more informative regarding Nassar, but again, it was about the aftermath of his crimes, not the crimes themselves. That post  focused on the the Senate hearings following the July 30 release of the report of an 18-month Senate investigation  that found that the U.S. Olympic Committee and others failed to protect young female athletes from Nassar’s probing hands, detailing “widespread failure by the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee (the “Committee”) and other institutions to keep athletes safe.”  Then there was this: Continue reading →

A Cautionary Tale: The Worst Social Media Influencer Ever?

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

(Don’t bet on it.)

Here at Ethics Alarms we try to steer clear of posts on conduct that is so obviously unethical that even the dimmest MSNBC host could figure it out. Normally, a mother being arrested after one of her kids escapes from the home, emaciated and with restraint marks, and begs a next door neighbor for help, would fall into this category. But this mother was a renowned web expert on parenting, with a popular Instagram account and YouTube channel. Her @moms_of_truth account on Instagram had 341,000 followers, and until it was mysteriously shut down last year, her “8 Passengers” YouTube channel (named after her, her husband, and their six kids)had a very profitable subscriber base of almost 2.3 million.

Ruby Franke, the wise and admired mom, was arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse in Ivins, Utah this week. A press release issued by the Santa Clara-Ivins Public Safety Department stated that on Aug. 30, 2023 “a report came into our dispatch center regarding a juvenile asking for help.” Franke’s son, 12, had “climbed out of a window and ran to a neighbor’s home,” according to the police booking affidavit. The boy asked the neighbor for food and water. “The neighbor observed duct tape on (the boy’s) ankles and wrists and contacted law enforcement. Upon arrival, law enforcement judged the boy’s wounds and malnourishment to be “severe.”

Funny, Ruby never discussed that child-rearing technique on the web…

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Ethics Alarms Archives Encore: “If ‘A Boy Named Sue’ Had Problems, What’s Chance Does An ‘It’ Named Searyl Have?”

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Introduction (March 31, 2023)

When I was preparing for yesterday’s final post about the French family fighting to overcome France’s paternalistic government bureaucrats from inflicting the name “Hades” on their infant son, I considered introducing the tale with Johnny Cash’s famous rendition of Shel Silverstein’s “A Boy Named Sue.” But I suspected that I had used the song before, and sure enough I had, in the post that follows, from six years ago.

The main thrust of the essay is the ethical issue touched on in the Hades story as well as others here through the years: the unethical act of giving children weird names. I was surprised, however, to see the post’s prescient and remarkably currently relevant commentary about the transgender insanity that was then no more than a twinkle in the Woke-Deranged mob’s metaphorical eye.

Wow, I nailed it. (Hence my doppleganger Fredo’s appearance in the clip from the Ethics Alarms clip collection.)Too bad only a small cadre of the ethically enlightened and intellectually curious read this blog: forewarned, maybe the current madness that has teachers encouraging fifth grade girls to cut off their breasts and large swathes of society urging momentarily confused boys to call themselves by plural pronouns and “identify” as “non-binary” could have been avoided, or at least minimized. This is my fault, of course; I’m the one who hasn’t figured out how to be an “influencer,” while 21-year-old Kardashians can. I get my self blackballed by NPR by daring to defend Donald Trump on a flaming progressive’s show.

Fredo.

But I digress—sorry. The quote below that struck me was this one:

This is what happens when you let the nose of a flatulent and rude camel into your tent. Those with gender issues should not be abused, beaten, or discriminated against. Agreed. They should have access to medical treatment connected to their condition. Absolutely. They should be able to openly declare their status without fear of reprisals, and people with compassion, manners and ethics shouldn’t teat them like freaks. Got it.

But they do not have leave to re-make the world in their image, and cry foul if the majority draws reasonable lines and says: No. Behave.

Here is the post, from July 10, 2017:

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Ethics Hero: Flaviane Carvalho

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

I love this story, and not just because it supports several Ethics Alarms principles, like the duty to confront, the duty to rescue, and the duty to fix the problem.

In Orlando on January 1, 2021, Mrs. Potato restaurant employee Flaviane Carvalho noticed that a young boy was sitting secluded from his parents and a a young girl. Carvalho said the boy was wearing a mask and hoodie as he sat at the table along with two adults and a young girl. She also noticed that he had a scratch in between in his eyebrows and wasn’t eating, even though food had been brought to the table. She asked the table if their food and drinks were all right, and when the one of the adults replied that the boy would eat his dinner at home, Carvalho said she began to think something was seriously wrong.

She did not decide to “minding her own business,” but instead decided that as a proactive and ethical member of society, this was her business. Carvalho stood behind the boy’s parents and held up a note asking the boy if he was OK. When the 11-year-old shook his head, she wrote a second note asking, “Do you need help?”  This time, the boy nodded yes. Carvalho called her boss and then called 911.

Police arrived and questioned the child, who told detectives he had suffered abuse at the hands of his stepfather, identified as Timothy Lee Wilson II.  Wilson was arrested at the restaurant, and the boy’s mother, Kristen Swann, was taken into custody on later that week after the boy made additional disclosures of alleged abuse.

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Good. Now Do Female Gymnasts, Swimmers, Child Models And Actors

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

The international governing body for figure skating, the International Skating Union, announced yesterday that it will gradually raise the minimum age for Olympic-level competition from 15 to 17.  Thus no skaters younger than 17 will be allowed to compete in the 2026 Milano Cortino Games.

The body suddenly figured out that there  young athletes competing in sports at a high level faced unacceptable risks, not merely physical injuries due to their immature physiques, but also “psychological injuries” which can have devastating effects on their mental, cognitive, and emotional health in the short and long term. Of course, they knew this before, and didn’t care as long as child champions brought revenue and visibility. But the ugly scandal resulting from Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva’s positive doping test at the last Winter Olympic Games in the Nation That Shall Not Be Named mandated a Barn Door Fallacy reaction. Valieva was given a child’s pass that allowed her to compete unfairly against adults, became the center of controversy, and crumbled under the criticism and scrutiny. Ethics Alarms discussed the matter here and elsewhere.
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The Women’s Free Skate Disaster Everybody Needed To See

/ Jack Marshall / 1 Comment

Now let’s see if any lessons were learned. I’m dubious.

As even those, like me, who have the integrity combined with a low nausea threshold that prevented me from watching China’s version of the 1936 Munich Olympics, now know about Olympics darling doper Kamila Valieva choking spectacularly in the Women’s Free Skate long program and falling out of the medal race. One has to feel sympathy for the girl, who was subjected to unimaginable pressures because of a tangle of terrible, stupid, unethical decisions made by the adults around her. Beyond that, the result was perfect, exposing so much of what is corrupt and intolerable about so many things: the Olympics generally, these Olympics, women’s skating, women’s sports, Russia, and more.

We begin with the fact that Valieva should never have been allowed to skate in the individual event after testing positive for a banned substance before the Games. The reasoning of the Olympics powers that holding her to the same standards that adults would be held to in the same events she competes with them is subjecting her to “harm” is unethical, the ultimate “Think of the children!’ rationalization. Gee, you idiots, how did that harm avoidance plan work out for her? In what universe would the 15-year-old skater be more harmed by being doped out of the Olympics as any adult skater would be, than by having to compete with a major scandal hanging over her head, and collapsing under the pressure? Sure, what happened was moral luck, but the best case scenario would have also been terrible: the girl stuns the world with a brilliant program, and every medal remains in limbo for months.

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The Rest Of The Story: “The Baby On The Album Cover: Dumb Lawsuit, Valid Ethics Point”

/ Jack Marshall / Leave a comment

Last August, I wrote about Spencer Eldon’s “Hail Mary” lawsuit against the surviving members of the band Nirvana over their use of his baby photo (which his parents received compensation for) in an iconic album cover above for “Nevermind.” The verdict here was that the lawsuit was doomed, he was greedy, and the law supported the band. However, I also wrote,

...Nonetheless, parents who use their children for public display are engaging in unethical conduct. Yes, they have the legal right to do it, and no, there is virtually no chance that any law will be passed banning what I consider to be child exploitation and low-level, but still unethical, child abuse. My wife and I have been watching the long-running British TV series “Call the Midwife,” and every episode requires one or more infants who are forced, without their consent, to endure the stressful experiences of playing newborns or sick baby’s under lights, in the arms of strangers, often covered with fake blood.

Elden might be insincere and the lawsuit is probably hopeless, but he’s not wrong in one respect. “[When] I go to a baseball game and think about it: ‘Man, everybody at this baseball game has probably seen my little baby penis,’” he said in one interview. “I feel like I got part of my human rights revoked.” Not rights, never rights: parents will always have the right to inflict indignities, publicity and stress on their minor offspring for fame and fortune. From the Coppertone girl to Linda Blair to “Mikey” and the kid in “The Shining,” they have all been unethically exploited by their parents, just like Spenser Eldon, without informed consent.

It’s legal, but it isn’t ethical.

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The Baby On The Album Cover: Dumb Lawsuit, Valid Ethics Point

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

Naked baby cover

Thirty years ago, Spencer Elden, age four months, was photographed by a family friend naked and floating in a pool at the Rose Bowl Aquatics Center in Pasadena, California. The striking and cute photo was then sold by his parents to be the cover of “Nevermind,” the rock band Nirvana’s second album that shot the Seattle band to international fame. (Never could stand Nirvana myself.)

Through the years Elden pretty much exhausted the opportunities to exploit his accidental celebrity, recreating the wet, wild and adorable moment for the album’s 10th, 17th, 20th and 25th anniversaries (but not with his naughty bits exposed, of course) “It’s cool but weird to be part of something so important that I don’t even remember,” he said in an interview with The New York Post in 2016, in which he posed holding the album cover at 25. Eldon even reportedly has “Nevermind” tattooed on his chest.But this year he needs money, or has a change of heart, or met up with an unethical lawyer, or something. Now Elden is suing Nirvana for damages, claiming his parents never signed a release authorizing the use of his image on the album, and more provocatively, that his nude infant image constitutes child pornography.

“The images exposed Spencer’s intimate body part and lasciviously displayed Spencer’s genitals from the time he was an infant to the present day,” legal papers filed in California claim. Lasciviously? The album cover indeed showed Elden as a baby with his genitalia exposed. Maybe it also made tiny Spencer seem greedy, since the graphic artist added a digitally added dollar bill on a fishing line, leaving the impression that the tot was trying to grab the dollar.

Of course, he IS greedy now.

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