Abandoned teddy bear, Author Ryan Hodnett (CC BY-SA 4.0 International)
WARNING: Graphic Images
Brittany Gosney, a 29 y.o. Ohio woman charged with murdering her 6 y.o. son James Hutchinson, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity [1].
In a confession now being contested, Gosney alleged that her boyfriend, James Hamilton, urged her to abandon all three of her children. She proceeded to do this, leaving the children in a parking lot at Rush Run Wildlife Area. The youngest grabbed the car door as Gosney gunned the engine, and was apparently dragged.
Gosney turned the vehicle around to check on the boy, and found he was dead. She then loaded the body and her two living children (7 y.o. and 9 y.o.) back into the car, and returned home. Gosney and Hamilton later tossed the little boy’s remains into the Ohio River, and attempted to pass his absence off as a disappearance.
Abandonment
Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interest in and legal rights over one’s children in an illegal manner, the intention being never to resume guardianship [2A]. As in the Gosney case, this is often done in such a reckless way that the children’s welfare and their very lives are placed at risk.
The term “abandonment” is generally used to describe physical abandonment of a child. It can, also, however, include severe neglect and emotional abandonment, as when parents fail to provide financial and/or emotional support to minor children for a prolonged period of time.
Apart from the damage severe neglect can cause, this particular form of abandonment may expose a child to sexual abuse by other adults with whom the child then comes into contact. It is not unheard of for addicted parents to trade their young children to sex traffickers in exchange for drugs. Continue reading
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