Musser family - disabled son dies in accidental drowning

[2xx1xy1JD]

Everything about this is heartbreaking.

I read her blog, esp. the part about Katie's adoption story. I was already horrified by the pictures that nogreaterjoy mom posted of Hasya, but those photos of Katie were even worse. Please tell me that there's a special place in hell reserved for the former director of the Pleven orphanage, because she was clearly torturing and murdering children. I can't fully wrap my head around a child of 9 years old weighing only 10 lbs. She looked so skeletal and fragile. My son weighed more when he was only 3 weeks old.

This mom and her attorney clearly saved the lives of many of the Pleven children, and preventing the horror from happening to future children.

[dairyfreelife]

Everything about this is heartbreaking.

I read her blog, esp. the part about Katie's adoption story. I was already horrified by the pictures that nogreaterjoy mom posted of Hasya, but those photos of Katie were even worse. Please tell me that there's a special place in hell reserved for the former director of the Pleven orphanage, because she was clearly torturing and murdering children. I can't fully wrap my head around a child of 9 years old weighing only 10 lbs. She looked so skeletal and fragile. My son weighed more when he was only 3 weeks old.

This mom and her attorney clearly saved the lives of many of the Pleven children, and preventing the horror from happening to future children.

My brother was about 10lbs at birth, so yeah, horrified to see she was as small as my brother was a birth at the age of 9 due to severe malnutrition and neglect. So beyond fucked up. Any sort of hell that may exist, I sure hope there's a special place for that director and any others like her.

I feel so terrible for Susanna. You know she's going to beat herself up for the rest of her life over this. I feel terrible for Tommy that it happened. I feel just as terrible for the siblings, especially the son who seemed to be best buds with Tommy. And Joe too. They have a strong faith, so I hope that will help them through this. As my grandparents lost a baby suddenly, I can say that it's not something she will ever get over, but the cliche "time heals all wounds" is true. Not fully heal, but with time things will get easier.

It's so sad especially as her posts just before showed that Tommy was getting better and doing better overall. My heart goes out to all of them.

[browncoatslytherin]

i had never heard of pleven until now. i did a google search and holy shit wow. :O those poor kids.

[OkToBeTakei]

GOMI has a pretty wide variety of opinions on this whole thing. Makes for interesting if not so pleasant reading. GOMI is like that though :lol:

[KateFowler]

My brother was about 10lbs at birth, so yeah, horrified to see she was as small as my brother was a birth at the age of 9 due to severe malnutrition and neglect. So beyond fucked up. Any sort of hell that may exist, I sure hope there's a special place for that director and any others like her.

I feel so terrible for Susanna. You know she's going to beat herself up for the rest of her life over this. I feel terrible for Tommy that it happened. I feel just as terrible for the siblings, especially the son who seemed to be best buds with Tommy. And Joe too. They have a strong faith, so I hope that will help them through this. As my grandparents lost a baby suddenly, I can say that it's not something she will ever get over, but the cliche "time heals all wounds" is true. Not fully heal, but with time things will get easier.

It's so sad especially as her posts just before showed that Tommy was getting better and doing better overall. My heart goes out to all of them.

I'm horrified and appalled that Susanna left Tommy to drown in the tub -- she should know better! Particularly since he was her 11th kid and functioned at the developmental level of a 1 year old baby!

The irony that Tommy survived 15+ years of hell on earth in Pleven, of neglect so very very severe that it's basically a miracle he didn't DIE... died after barely a year of Susanna's "mamalove"!

Nobody with more than 3 brain cells leaves a 1 yo baby unsupervised in a tub. Not for 45 seconds. It's stupid, dangerous and takes two seconds to wrap the kid in a towel and take him with you to get the phone. Or let the phone to go to voicemail.

Leaving a 7 yo unsupervised on a playground or in a library for a few minutes is NOT AT ALL comparable to leaving a baby (developmental baby) in a tub.

It's also beyond gross that Susanna has:

1) claimed letting Tommy die has strengthened her marriage

2) left the "Tommy and Katie care fund" PayPal link on her blog. So folks can give $) to care for those kids to her fam. Including the dead kid!!

[VVV]

I'm horrified and appalled that Susanna left Tommy to drown in the tub -- she should know better! Particularly since he was her 11th kid and functioned at the developmental level of a 1 year old baby!

The irony that Tommy survived 15+ years of hell on earth in Pleven, of neglect so very very severe that it's basically a miracle he didn't DIE... died after barely a year of Susanna's "mamalove"!

Nobody with more than 3 brain cells leaves a 1 yo baby unsupervised in a tub. Not for 45 seconds. It's stupid, dangerous and takes two seconds to wrap the kid in a towel and take him with you to get the phone. Or let the phone to go to voicemail.

Leaving a 7 yo unsupervised on a playground or in a library for a few minutes is NOT AT ALL comparable to leaving a baby (developmental baby) in a tub.

It's also beyond gross that Susanna has:

1) claimed letting Tommy die has strengthened her marriage

2) left the "Tommy and Katie care fund" PayPal link on her blog. So folks can give $) to care for those kids to her fam. Including the dead kid!!

Well, aren't you a peach.

Show me a parent who says that not once, never, in years of parenting did she ever inadvertently or thoughtlessly do or fail to do something that could have ended badly, and I will show you a liar. We all slip up, have a moment of inattention, or make a bad judgment call. It's just that most of the time, it doesn't end in tragedy.

[dairyfreelife]

Well, aren't you a peach.

Show me a parent who says that not once, never, in years of parenting did she ever inadvertently or thoughtlessly do or fail to do something that could have ended badly, and I will show you a liar. We all slip up, have a moment of inattention, or make a bad judgment call. It's just that most of the time, it doesn't end in tragedy.

I read the Mussers blog a few months before they got Tommy and still do. Many marriages fall apart after the loss of a child and my impression from her blog was that it is making them closer instead. Tragedy like this can either bring people closer or tear them apart. For their children's sakes, I am glad it is not tearing them apart. I have little doubt it eats them up everyday that Tommy is not with them anymore. They have other children though and must keep going. They can't just stop living, even if they sometimes wish the world would stop. Life does not stop. I will continue to wish for peace and healing for the Musser family.

[GiGi_41]

When my son died, his father was married and I had a long term partner. I still have a long term partner and my ex was divorced within 6 months and had no idea why...I will tell you that while my relationship isn't the best, we are committed to supporting each other with the loss.

[KateFowler]

Well, aren't you a peach.

Show me a parent who says that not once, never, in years of parenting did she ever inadvertently or thoughtlessly do or fail to do something that could have ended badly, and I will show you a liar. We all slip up, have a moment of inattention, or make a bad judgment call. It's just that most of the time, it doesn't end in tragedy.

I've made tons of parenting mistakes but have never EVER left a baby/toddler unsupervised in the tub. Not even for a minute. I've got 2 kids and spent way too many years lifeguarding as a teen.

Tommy Musser would probably still be alive had he remained in Pleven. He, Selah Clanton (ate/moved/breathed independently for 7 yrs in ghastly mental institute in Ukraine -- was rendered comatose when her adoptive daddy Jon accidentally dropped her into Erie Canal strapped into a stroller within months of being "saved") and Nicolai Emelyentsev are just a few of the Reece's Rainbow kids who would've been way better off in the ghastly orphanage they spent their early years in.

By "way better off", specifically I mean alive (Tommy, Nicolai) and not comatose (Selah).

Susanna had a zillion kids before Tommy... and somehow managed to not drown any of the 10 of them in the tub.

[Kailash]

KateFowler- because of your lifeguarding background, leaving a child alone in the tub is something you would never do. But not everyone has the same life experience as you do. For every accident that happens, you would be able to find another mother who would say she would never have done that to her child. That does not in any way translate to neglect on the part of the mother that it did happen to. I'm not saying that cause of death is never from neglect, just that in this, I don't believe it was. Obviously, you feel differently.

And is alive really the only measure of doing better? I'm confident that Tommy had more joy in his life, more happiness in the year or so that he spent with this family than was ever even imagined while at the orphanage. I dare to think that if asked, he would pick getting out of the orphanage and that year again, even if he knew how he'd die.

[VVV]

KateFowler- because of your lifeguarding background, leaving a child alone in the tub is something you would never do. But not everyone has the same life experience as you do. For every accident that happens, you would be able to find another mother who would say she would never have done that to her child. That does not in any way translate to neglect on the part of the mother that it did happen to. I'm not saying that cause of death is never from neglect, just that in this, I don't believe it was. Obviously, you feel differently.

And is alive really the only measure of doing better? I'm confident that Tommy had more joy in his life, more happiness in the year or so that he spent with this family than was ever even imagined while at the orphanage. I dare to think that if asked, he would pick getting out of the orphanage and that year again, even if he knew how he'd die.

I agree with the bolded 100%.

On a very active parenting board I follow, two parents in the past few years have lost young children to accidental drownings and a third nearly lost her child--two in backyard swimming pools, one in a bathtub. All were good parents who either stepped away for what was intended to be a brief moment, or whose family members were supposed to be watching the kids. None were megafamilies, none were stressed with special needs kids. They were normal, loving families in which the brief inattention which in most other families passes by unnoticed ended for them with tragedy.

When my oldest child was just a month old, I drove him to and from an appointment with a lactation consultant. When I got home, I was horrified to realize that I had not fastened the straps on his carseat and that he had been at risk the entire drive home. If you'd asked me before, I would have told you emphatically that I would NEVER fail to use a carseat correctly, and that I was well aware of ALL THE BAD THINGS that could happen to an unsecured baby in a moving car, and that people who did not secure their babies appropriately in carseats were NEGLECTFUL PARENTS. And yet, I had a moment of inattention that could have--but did not--result in tragedy. That child is now 19, but my blood still runs cold when I think about what might have been. But nothing bad happened, just as nothing bad happens to most people most of the time when they have a lapse in judgment.

[2xx1xy1JD]

KateFowler:

I was also a lifeguard. Anything to do with water gets an extra dose of attention from me, because I do have that background and know just how quickly and quietly a child can drown.

I also know, unfortunately, that far too many parents don't have that same knowledge. A friend of mine lost her toddler as a result of a backyard pool drowning. I get on my soapbox about the dangers of having a backyard pool or allowing young children to be in a bathtub or around water without constant, direct supervision, precisely because most caring, loving parents underestimate the danger.

Allowing a child to grow up and move around and explore will involve a certain amount of risk. I consider myself a careful parent - but Girl 1 managed to get a paper cut on her face (and still has a tiny scar), Girl 2 managed to jump off furniture and land head first a few times as a tot and The Boy managed to gag on some stickers and have our heavy chest of drawer fall on him (most terrifying moment of my life - it's a miracle that he was fine because if it had landed at a slightly different angle, it could have killed him).

[FreeHannie!]

I'm horrified and appalled that Susanna left Tommy to drown in the tub -- she should know better! Particularly since he was her 11th kid and functioned at the developmental level of a 1 year old baby!

The irony that Tommy survived 15+ years of hell on earth in Pleven, of neglect so very very severe that it's basically a miracle he didn't DIE... died after barely a year of Susanna's "mamalove"!

Nobody with more than 3 brain cells leaves a 1 yo baby unsupervised in a tub. Not for 45 seconds. It's stupid, dangerous and takes two seconds to wrap the kid in a towel and take him with you to get the phone. Or let the phone to go to voicemail.

Leaving a 7 yo unsupervised on a playground or in a library for a few minutes is NOT AT ALL comparable to leaving a baby (developmental baby) in a tub.

No offence, but just shut up.

Most people know to be smart with children and water but parents are people, and people screw up or make split second decisions that are costly.

A few years ago, my cousin was running a bath for her 18mo son and she heard a glass drop and an ear piercing scream of 'MY FOOT' from her 4 year old. She told her 18mo son 'wait there, don't get in the bath' and ran out to check on her daughter who had cut her hand and foot badly trying to get a glass of water. In the space of a minute or two, her son climbed in the bath and drowned.

My cousin is human. She already beats her self up every single day over the loss of her child, many years later (he'd have been 8 now and she's still not 'over it'.) and she was in therapy for about 5 years from it as she was suicidal from guilt.

People who are mourning don't need some holier than thou type like you to snottily look down on them all WELL I WOULD HAVE NEVER DONE THAT, YOU CLEARLY HAVE NO BRAIN CELLS. Like. Seriously. If in these situations you have nothing supportive to say (or at least can't politely say that it is a tragic reminder never to leave kids around water without insulting the woman), just shut up.

[KateFowler]

No offence, but just shut up.

Most people know to be smart with children and water but parents are people, and people screw up or make split second decisions that are costly.

A few years ago, my cousin was running a bath for her 18mo son and she heard a glass drop and an ear piercing scream of 'MY FOOT' from her 4 year old. She told her 18mo son 'wait there, don't get in the bath' and ran out to check on her daughter who had cut her hand and foot badly trying to get a glass of water. In the space of a minute or two, her son climbed in the bath and drowned.

My cousin is human. She already beats her self up every single day over the loss of her child, many years later (he'd have been 8 now and she's still not 'over it'.) and she was in therapy for about 5 years from it as she was suicidal from guilt.

People who are mourning don't need some holier than thou type like you to snottily look down on them all WELL I WOULD HAVE NEVER DONE THAT, YOU CLEARLY HAVE NO BRAIN CELLS. Like. Seriously. If in these situations you have nothing supportive to say (or at least can't politely say that it is a tragic reminder never to leave kids around water without insulting the woman), just shut up.

Leaving a baby unsupervised in the tub is stupid and irresponsible and dangerous.

Susanna should feel guilty about her role in Tommy's preventable death.

This business of "Tommy had more happiness in his last year in earth then in the previous 15" ... is debatable. (On the blog, he spent rather a lot of time making Susanna miserable with his poop-splosions and Verity miserable with his shreiking).

Susanna is adamantly pro-life, all life is valuable/precious... dead is worse than alive. If you're looking at outcomes -- Tommy's dead. Pleven didn't kill him. Susanna's negligence did.

It's awful that the cousin who let her kid drown in the tub feels terrible about it nearly a decade later -- she should. Like Susanna should. Actions have consequences.

I'm also willing to bet that your cuz wasn't merrily bragging about how her kid's death improved her marriage and that the sibling was 100% over the death within a month or two -- which Susanna has done!

[slp]

Leaving a baby unsupervised in the tub is stupid and irresponsible and dangerous.

Susanna should feel guilty about her role in Tommy's preventable death.

This business of "Tommy had more happiness in his last year in earth then in the previous 15" ... is debatable. (On the blog, he spent rather a lot of time making Susanna miserable with his poop-splosions and Verity miserable with his shreiking).

Susanna is adamantly pro-life, all life is valuable/precious... dead is worse than alive. If you're looking at outcomes -- Tommy's dead. Pleven didn't kill him. Susanna's negligence did.

It's awful that the cousin who let her kid drown in the tub feels terrible about it nearly a decade later -- she should. Like Susanna should. Actions have consequences.

I'm also willing to bet that your cuz wasn't merrily bragging about how her kid's death improved her marriage and that the sibling was 100% over the death within a month or two -- which Susanna has done!

Must be nice to be perfect. I'm assuming your children (if you even have any) have never gotten hurt in any way??

[FreeHannie!]

Leaving a baby unsupervised in the tub is stupid and irresponsible and dangerous.

Susanna should feel guilty about her role in Tommy's preventable death.

Susanna is adamantly pro-life, all life is valuable/precious... dead is worse than alive. If you're looking at outcomes -- Tommy's dead. Pleven didn't kill him. Susanna's negligence did.

You've missed the entire point of my post. Congratulations on being the perfect parent who has never made a mistake in her life and a total asshole.

[Mama Mia]

Leaving a baby unsupervised in the tub is stupid and irresponsible and dangerous.

Susanna should feel guilty about her role in Tommy's preventable death.

This business of "Tommy had more happiness in his last year in earth then in the previous 15" ... is debatable. (On the blog, he spent rather a lot of time making Susanna miserable with his poop-splosions and Verity miserable with his shreiking).

Susanna is adamantly pro-life, all life is valuable/precious... dead is worse than alive. If you're looking at outcomes -- Tommy's dead. Pleven didn't kill him. Susanna's negligence did.

It's awful that the cousin who let her kid drown in the tub feels terrible about it nearly a decade later -- she should. Like Susanna should. Actions have consequences.

I'm also willing to bet that your cuz wasn't merrily bragging about how her kid's death improved her marriage and that the sibling was 100% over the death within a month or two -- which Susanna has done!

God, you are just really are a monster aren't you? We get it. You would be super duper careful around water and your child would be highly unlikely to drown. I hope your children grow up happy and healthy and safe. But there are a hundred other things that could go wrong due to a momentary lapse on your part. Only the worst kind of bitch would compound that tragedy by laying on the guilt about it. This isn't someone who left the kid alone in the bath while she went shopping at the mall, or to turn tricks on the corner.

She left him for a couple minutes when she thought he was safe. All parents. Eventually. Will decide their kid is safe on their own for a minute or two in the tub, in the backyard, in the living room, getting a snack out of the kitchen. And on and on and on. Even a severely disabled child will, ideally, have tiny little steps towards less constant supervision. That's what development is.

And are you kidding me with the line about him not having had a better life in that one year? Based on life not being 100% perfect outside of the orphanage? Do you even have children? If you don't - well, I guess you are just blindly naive. If you do- and you don't see how incredibly arrogant you are-- well, I guess I just feel sorry for your kids.

{L_MESSAGE_HIDDEN}:

In my family my daughter is incredibly worried about falls. She is incredibly careful about heavy and high furniture that could be pulled down on a kid. Like nothing in her house is over 3 foot high. No high dressers, the tv is on the floor and so on. Because, decades before she was born, a toddler in the family died from pulling a heavy set of shelves on themselves. And it messed up everyone in the family. It was the only infant or child death in the family as far back as our records go, so for at least 150+ years. So that is the "horrible thing that can happen to children if you aren't careful" that is stuck in her mind. And that she is incredibly careful about. And still, her daughter had a close call ( Thank God that's all it was, she was injured, but is fine. ) because I tripped and fell while carrying her as an infant. My shoe caught in a crack in the sidewalk. It was the most terrifying event of my life. My point is -- you can not prevent everything. And if something horrible happens, and you weren't doing something just stunningly , mind blowingly negligent - it takes a horrible, twisted mentality to heap on the blame, atop whatever the family is already enduring.

[Trynn]

My condolences to the family. Tragic.

[Firiel]

No offence, but just shut up.

Most people know to be smart with children and water but parents are people, and people screw up or make split second decisions that are costly.

A few years ago, my cousin was running a bath for her 18mo son and she heard a glass drop and an ear piercing scream of 'MY FOOT' from her 4 year old. She told her 18mo son 'wait there, don't get in the bath' and ran out to check on her daughter who had cut her hand and foot badly trying to get a glass of water. In the space of a minute or two, her son climbed in the bath and drowned.

My cousin is human. She already beats her self up every single day over the loss of her child, many years later (he'd have been 8 now and she's still not 'over it'.) and she was in therapy for about 5 years from it as she was suicidal from guilt.

People who are mourning don't need some holier than thou type like you to snottily look down on them all WELL I WOULD HAVE NEVER DONE THAT, YOU CLEARLY HAVE NO BRAIN CELLS. Like. Seriously. If in these situations you have nothing supportive to say (or at least can't politely say that it is a tragic reminder never to leave kids around water without insulting the woman), just shut up.

:clap:

[KateFowler]

"

And are you kidding me with the line about him not having had a better life in that one year? Based on life not being 100% perfect outside of the orphanage? Do you even have children? If you don't - well, I guess you are just blindly naive. If you do- and you don't see how incredibly arrogant you are-- well, I guess I just feel sorry for your kids

."

Yes, I've got kids (two!) and no, I'm not kidding. Tommy was (barely) alive at Pleven and is now dead thanks to Susanna's "love".

Susanna was 100% aware Tommy was a severely disabled kid with extraordinarily high needs & an extraordinarily high need for supervision at the time of his death -- his mobility was severely limited, his intellectual disability left him unable to recognize/avoid danger & he often self-injured. Months earlier, she'd posted a sweet video of Tommy turning on the tap in the tub on her blog.

The fact that Susanna feels her marriage is better for having inadvertently killed Tommy AND that her kids don't miss him in the slightest?

Disgusting.

[chaotic life]

Susanna is deeply grieving, in therapy, and trying to place the senseless loss of her beloved son into her faith paradigm that says everything must happen for a reason. She is not even six months out from her loss and barely coherent yet. There is none of the callous denial in her posts that Sparkling Lauren demonstrates, no lack of denial of grief and self awareness.

Leave the woman to grieve her son. There is no good reason to pick apart her grief and attack her for doing it "wrong" when you have no clue what this is like to live.

[KateFowler]

Susanna is deeply grieving, in therapy, and trying to place the senseless loss of her beloved son into her faith paradigm that says everything must happen for a reason. She is not even six months out from her loss and barely coherent yet. There is none of the callous denial in her posts that Sparkling Lauren demonstrates, no lack of denial of grief and self awareness.

Leave the woman to grieve her son. There is no good reason to pick apart her grief and attack her for doing it "wrong" when you have no clue what this is like to live.

Susanna has the option of grieving in peace - it's called "shutting down her ghastly blog" or "password protecting" the posts on it.

Susanna has the option of taking down the paypal link asking for money to pay for Tommy and Katie's care. Because it's beyond gross to ask for donations to cover the cost of caring for a DEAD KID! Particularly given that Susanna had demanded cash from strangers to cover:

- her adoption costs x 2

- therapies/formulas for her adopted kids x 2

- the funeral & headstone costs for Tommy

- exploited both adopted kids by putting the most private, most intimate details of their lives and challenges before adoption (to get $$ to adopt them) and after. Intimate deets that are out there, in cyberspace, forever.

[chaotic life]

I processed my early grief through my blog as well. So I guess that makes me as vile as Susanna. I stand my ground that everything I see on her blog looks raw and realistic to what grief looks like. The reason I processed on my blog was because I had friends wanting to know how I was doing, and it was way too painful to have to discuss it repeatedly in person.

My blog is annonymous and I have never asked for financial support, but the financial support is also part of her paradigm, the same as trying to find purpose in Tommy's death.

You have no concept of what it is like to lose a child. I find your arrogance in choosing to Villianize her grief pathetic.

[Mama Mia]

"."

Yes, I've got kids (two!) and no, I'm not kidding. Tommy was (barely) alive at Pleven and is now dead thanks to Susanna's "love".

Susanna was 100% aware Tommy was a severely disabled kid with extraordinarily high needs & an extraordinarily high need for supervision at the time of his death -- his mobility was severely limited, his intellectual disability left him unable to recognize/avoid danger & he often self-injured. Months earlier, she'd posted a sweet video of Tommy turning on the tap in the tub on her blog.

The fact that Susanna feels her marriage is better for having inadvertently killed Tommy AND that her kids don't miss him in the slightest?

Disgusting.

I read through her blog, where on earth are you getting that her marriage is better and that the kids don't miss him? Her way of trying to cope with her grief isn't the way I would do it. But I'm not her. If posting on her blog helps her, what on earth is your issue?

And her posting details about, and asking for donations for, these incredibly neglected kids in order to raise awareness is somehow wrong? It looks, in reading around the web,that her postings and advocacy had a big role in getting the evil director ousted, vastly improving conditions in the orphanage, raising money for staff and equipment and getting most of the most neglected kids adopted and out if there. And your problem is what, exactly?

You need help.

[dairyfreelife]

Susanna did not put up a paypal to fund Tommy's funeral costs. Other bloggers did that for her and she asked the funds to be sent to help other children instead of Tommy because they were okay. I have read Susanna's blog since before they went to Bulgaria to adopt Tommy and no, she did not say Tommy's siblings do not miss him. She said they are doing better than she thought.

KF resurrected this thread from archives just to beat Susanna down. In fact, that seems to be all s/he is doing. Resurrecting old threads to criticize people. Susanna will be beating herself up the rest of her life over this accident. And it was just an accident. I am really beginning to wonder what you are doing here if not to just to stir up trouble.