Sad, however, there is market and lots of money to make from these addicts. Such is life.

Originally posted by BarCrow

   As for her husband. I assume he was dishonorably discharged. Imagine...he is enlisted and suppose to protect this country yet can't even be bothered to protect his own child. Hand her a sandwich...find a babysitter/housecleaner...anything to remove his daughter from the conditions under which she suffered. He deserves no less than life in prison.

 Why should he be punished?  He was away for 9 days.  Long enough for this to happen.  Lets see what we know: He took an older child to relatives figured mother could handle one.  Child died weighing 23 lbs at 3 1/2(My son is just over 3 1/2 weighs roughly 30+ up to 2 lbs.  Losing weigh not being fed at that age is quite easy to do as there is usually no fat to be retained.

Now how is going to protect his child when he is away?  We can all assume the worse case scenario: This happened all the time, he'd leave for 3 days come back and find out his children weren't fed at all.  Then again, I'd say the older child protected the younger child and made sure she had something to eat so this was an unknown factor for father to realise how bad the total neglect actually was.

If he had known, I bet he wouldn't have decided it was a good idea for the younger one to stay, and would of switched the children around.  Then again: My 3 1/2 year old can climb on counters, get into cupboards and get himself something if he wants to and can open the fridge and grab himself the milk or juice  to hand me to pour for him.  So the question here was there anything to even eat in the house?  This is where I'd personally see you could point some of the blame on the father.  Seriously if there wasn't a lick to eat in the house an he left with the cupboards bare knowing she does not leave the house I can see a case against him, otherwise I'd say he couldn't rationalize the full magnitude of his wife's utter disregard for anything to put it as polite and friendly as I can.

The article said that the child resorted to eating catfood. ..so obviously there was nothing to eat. The Husband knew the situation..or at least had serious suspicions. Enough to make sure one child was not subjected...so why leave the other to this abuse? It was mention by a poster that the husband couldn't justify with the mother why he would put the child elsewhere. Well..he should have told her she needs help and placed the child elsewhere with a relative. Don't really see how you can defend him?  If he was overseas for months..then sure..he'd have no idea....but he was home..at least frequently enough to know something was wrong. I know kids weight can go up and down...but there is a clear difference between a child who loses some weight and one that is  malnourished. Not to mention the apartment apparenty reeked of cat piss and the litter box was grossly overflowing.

Originally posted by ghettobooste

People can say how it isn't the game and it's the mental problems of the user, but it is amazing how many lives WoW has destroyed. I have seen this with my real life friends. Dudes who are like 30+ years old, have no job, can't afford cigs, relying on handouts for food, but somehow still afford an internet connection and a WoW sub.

It's really sad and scary. Their virtual lives in Azeroth have more meaning and purpose than their real lives.

Could be those people who use WoW to self-destruct would just use any other addiction to do the same, because they're on a self-destructive course already.  It's not like you have people who are perfectly happy picking up video games and suddenly throwing thier lives away.  These are people looking for an escape to begin with.  It is amazing how many people are desperate to escape their lives.

This is all setting aside the fact that if you let your little kid starve to death, you're on a whole other level of crazy.

That's why I won't bother having kids :D

What a tragedy.

At least something good might come out of this. At least someone might read about this, realize that they can go to jail for basically life and re-prioritize their lives.

That is just crazy to come to such an end.

Poor little girl at 3 years old she could almost eat by herself, that so terribly sad.

I guess the mother really have heavy psychological problems, i just can't beleive an addiction to a game can go that far. Also even if the girl eat every 15 hour she wouldn't have starved, there is something else behind it. Some mother just cannot stand the post birth trauma a lot of mother get.

[Mod Edit]

Relevant or not, I think shunning the topic is both dangerous and irresponsible. We need to continue to evolve as a species, and that becomes difficult when everyone simply plugs their ears and covers their eyes every time something is questioned or even brought up. I have to listen to what others believe in, why is it that I have to basically just shut up about my own beliefs/knowledge? The answer: sadly, we are still living as a primitive species. Don't let the technology (most of which was developed because of war) fool you. Now, I can accept this fact, I just don't like all of the censorship that some topics seem to be babied with.

Note: obviously, I am not commenting about just these forums in specific.

...and they move it to the wow forum.  lol.  morons :p

Why is this in the WoW forums? It's not about WoW, it's about crappy parenting which WoW happened to be a part of it.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Fucked up bad? PRISON!  Considering that she didnt even care about her child she could be the least dangerous person on earth, society doesnt need protection from her. Instead of making her work  in some social institution or do some oder community labour and let her go to the headdoctor they send her into prison.  Will surely help everyone, fuck yeah moral followers 1: rational people 0

Why did the father get blamed as well?

Originally posted by Sanguinelust

Originally posted by Nailzzz

Originally posted by Sanguinelust

Something probably drove her to play like that, perhaps having a husband who was absent most of the time had something to do with it, maybe depression, or just an addictive personality but the real issue here is that gaming is addictive and until people can come to grips with that then stuff like this will continue to happen. Is this any different from parents doing drugs instead of caring for thier kids? I don't think so. People die from neglecting themselves while playing games, it's no surprise that children die from it too.

I'm happy to see that the father is going to jail too.

      I find this a bit troubling. Im not going to say the father was entirely blameless but he was an active duty air force seargent who had been away for 9 days by the time of the child's death. He did make arangements to get 1 child sent off to there grandparents so he was aware of a problem with his wife's ability as a parent, but probably didnt feel he would be able to come up with a justification to be able to get the youngest child away. Women tend to get rather pointedly offended when you make it too obvious that you feel there a bad mother and he may have been attempting to avioid a divorce when he got back from active duty. Seeing as military personell stand to lose a great deal in a divorce and how its epidemic for military men to come home to family court summons, he was probably hoping he could avoid it and simply mitigate the damage his wife would cause.

     Also trying to report his wife's behaviour to social services, even if done anonymously, would likely have been ignored as is routinely the case when social workers hear of accusations against a mother. Our culture worships the mother-child bond to an unrealistic degree while at the same time denigrates or ignores the father-child bond despite that the vast majority of child deaths due to abuse/neglect is caused by mothers by a huge margin over the same caused by biological fathers.

     The thing i find most surprising about this case is that she actually rec'd a 25 yr sentence. Typically when mothers kill there children, even actively, a sentence of this magnitude is actually pretty rare.

If the husband was aware of the situation and was that concerned he would have done what it took to make sure the safety of those children were his top priority regardless of how the mother felt about the truth, which is she was not fit to care for those children because of her addiction.

As much as it pained me to do so when my brother and his wife had their children taken into child protective services because of their opiate addiction I stood up and made sure everyone in the family knew what happened and why. Sure, my brother and sister in law hated that I had contact with their social worker and also that I took a stand and let everyone know about their problems but by doing so I made it so that they couldn't get away with blaming the system for their problems and trying to use that excuse to gain sympathy from our family.

You do what you have to do to protect the people you love no matter how troubling others may find it. They both deserve stiff sentences for their failure to care for their child.

As far as the mother/child cultural way of thinking goes I think that's BS. My daughters mother was not capable of giving the care I thought was necessary to our child so I took her to court and won custody from her. Simple as that. People need to get thicker skins regarding hurt feelings when it comes to kids being neglected. If you fail to act you are just as responsible as the abuser.

      Im glad that the situations you mentioned worked out well in your particular case. However the ability to retain custody as an active service member of the armed forces often sent out of country or state of residence has far less of a chance than the average father fighting for custody. In these situations and as someone who follows family law a bit, i can asure you that you were fortunate compared to most to get custody(only around 15%of fathers get custody after divorce). Children left in state custody are often not in a much better position than this child was in terms of potential neglect and abuse goes. At least in the current situation the father hoped that at least he could have some mittigating influence over the fate of his children. Sadly in this case it clearly wasnt enough.

     As for your disbelief about the cultural bias towards mothers, you can simply find the evidence of what im talking about in the responces in this very thread about how the mother shouldnt be in prison and need therapy instead. And then contrast that to your (among others in this thread's) belief that despite not having been in the position of direct responcibility at the time, the father should be in prison. From cases ive seen in the past similar to this, i wouldnt be surprised if you all get your way and her sentence gets commuted on appeal, and he finds himself in prison for a longer time than she will.

Originally posted by xKingdomx

Why isn't she sentenced to life? 25 years means she is out by 53, and may have a chance to have another kid.

 

Maybe she can get labelled as child killer, and unable to have another child.

I dont know about other countries ( I'm from the UK ) but Life Sentence certainly does not mean life in prison... I think the average is actually 25 years. So technically, she did.

I'm the kind of person that can sit down, play a MMO for 18 hours+ a day for several years without blinking an eye - and even I manage to feed/walk my dog (if not myself sometimes).

This goes way beyond a term so simple as "neglect."

And right now Casey Anthony trial 24/7.

An appropriate video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIb6AZdTr-A  A death metal band should redo this song.

What are prisons like in New Mexico? Do they have internet access?

Originally posted by Dragonantis

Yeah, these people give gamers a bad name

That's all you're worried about? Pathetic.

Children shouldn't have to go through things like this. It saddens me. Also, the mother should be in prison longer than 25 years, but it is what it is.

Originally posted by pl3dge

Originally posted by xKingdomx

Why isn't she sentenced to life? 25 years means she is out by 53, and may have a chance to have another kid.

 

Maybe she can get labelled as child killer, and unable to have another child.

I dont know about other countries ( I'm from the UK ) but Life Sentence certainly does not mean life in prison... I think the average is actually 25 years. So technically, she did.

IIRC a life sentance in some US state is 99 years, the judge giving the sentance can then stipulate the minimum amount of time served before the convict becomes eligable for parole or even stipulate that they never become eligable for parole.