Another case of horrific abuse hidden by homeschooling

[Cleopatra7]

I don't even have words for this... :(

Two people have been arrested in what authorities describe as a twisted, gruesome case of abuse involving a child's corpse hidden in a broken-down car, a starved baby living on water and a sheltered teenager impregnated by her stepfather.

Jondrew Lachaux, 39, and Kellie Phillips, 38, turned themselves in after the three children were discovered, North Las Vegas police said.

The two face child abuse charges. Lachaux is also charged with concealing evidence after the toddler's badly decomposed body was found in the garage.

According to court documents, the man and woman took five of their children on a trip to Oakland, California, eight months ago. The couple left behind two daughters — a teen and a sickly 3-year-old toddler — in their suburban Las Vegas home because the rental vehicle was full.

The teen is Phillips' biological child and Lachaux's stepdaughter.

Authorities say Lachaux reportedly impregnated the teen, who gave birth at home without any medical care to a now 4-month-old girl.

She struggled to care for herself while pregnant and her 3-year-old sister who had medical problems while they were home alone. But the teen said she was too scared to call for help even after the food and medication left by their mother ran out.

For the last five years, the family had lived in North Las Vegas, but the group of children rarely went outside and was homeschooled. The teen told police she has had braces on from five years ago but hasn't seen a dentist since.

In late March, she said her stepfather came home to hide her sister's corpse and then kicked her out of the house in fear that her mother would find out about the pregnancy. She survived for a few days homeless in public places, including at the airport and on the Las Vegas Strip.

The teen said the 3-year-old sister apparently had trouble breathing and died about a month ago. She called her parents for two weeks before Lachaux called back to learn of the death.

Lachaux and the teen apparently hid the badly decomposed body in the back seat of a broken-down Mercedes in the garage. The corpse was leaking fluids but was concealed in a box surrounded by blankets, plastic bags and pizza boxes, according to court records.

The coroner's office said it has not yet positively identified the body or the cause of death.

The teen is now being held in juvenile detention on a child abuse charge.

The other five children -- ages 1, 4, 7, 8 and 9 -- were found with Phillips in good health and have been put in protective custody.

[Burris]

The teenager is being held on child abuse charges?

Yeah, that sounds fair. I mean, it's not as if her step-father had impregnated her or anything.

[sparkles]

The teenager is being held on child abuse charges?

Yeah, that sounds fair. I mean, it's not as if her step-father had impregnated her or anything.

I don't get this at all. And what about the parents? Sick sick sick.

[Four is Enough]

That is one of the most twisted, horrifying things I've ever read.

[polecat]

The teenager is being held on child abuse charges?

Yeah, that sounds fair. I mean, it's not as if her step-father had impregnated her or anything.

God, the whole story is heartbreaking, but this might just be the worst part of it. It's bad enough her parents abused, violated and neglected her so horrifically; now society is taking potshots at her.

I sincerely hope the charge is tossed and she gets access to the care she almost certainly needs.

[Koala]

Oh good god. This has nothing to do with homeschooling and everything to do with two crazy abusive fucks who should spend the rest of their natural lives in prison.

The system people think would have saved these kids if their parents had just not had the cover of homeschooling is run by the exact same kind of people who have chosen to imprison an abused teenager.

These are not upstanding citizens we're talking about here. Do you (in general...not anyone specifically) honestly think they'd let the school system stop them from doing what they did??? Really? Horrible people do horrible things. Eliminating homeschooling won't stop that.

[Jana814]

That is one of the most twisted, horrifying things I've ever read.

Agree so very sad!

[ILoveJellybeans]

Oh poor child :( Abused and impregnated by her own stepfather, and now blamed for the toddler's death. It wasn't her fault that the food and medication ran out and the toddler died, she was sheltered and too scared to call for help. She tried to tell her parents, but nobody answered her calls. Knowing what these sort of people say about the government and CPS, she was probably too afraid to go for outside help in case they took her somewhere where she would be even more abused.

Are they not doing anything about the parents, who are the real abusers here. Shes just a frightened kid who is now in jail.

[Hane]

How heartbreaking. What happened to her baby?

[Cleopatra7]

Whoops, I forgot to include the link :

https://www.yahoo.com/news/man-woman-ar ... 46069.html 

I'm not suggesting that this is indicative of home schoolers because it obviously isn't, but it illustrates the dangers of not having any laws regulating it. We can't always assume that parents always know best as there are too many examples to the contrary (most child abuse happens in the home

[Koala]

Abuse can absolutely happen in homes, but that doesn't mean we should treat all parents like abusers. In my opinion, parents should not be under the scrutiny of the state unless they have done something to show that their children are unsafe in their care.

I have heard people go as far as suggest homeschooling parents should be obligated to present their children for what basically amounts to an inspection. That's insane. And if we do that with school children, what about infants and toddlers? Kids sometimes don't start school until 5. How are we to know they aren't being abused in their homes? Maybe there should just be regular home inspections for everyone with children.

[Koala]

As a side note, there is a local school here that made the news twice in one month. They had teacher arrested for sexual contact with a student and a student arrested for beating another student in what is believed to be a gang initiation.

Bad people do bad things. No amount of oversight is going to stop that. Intruding on the lives of innocent people won't stop that.

[BrownieMomma]

I completely disagree that cases like this indicate a problem with homeschooling that requires more government oversight and intervention.

That man and woman are off their rocker, especially that horrible stepfather. That teen girl could sit in a classroom all the live long day and no one be the wiser of the abuse she receives at home at the hands of her stepfather and probably with her mother turning a blind eye.

May I candidly say that if anyone wants to have the state be more involved in homeschooling, there must be other avenues to pursue and actual reasons to do it other than a few isolated cases of truly insane parents.

As I said before, that woman lit her infant on fire in the street. Do not rely on school systems to protect children from insane parents. That baby was too young to have been in any required system.

I don't know how to find mentally ill parents, help them, or protect their children. Requiring government intervention and oversight of homeschoolers is not going to protect children from their mentally ill parents but it will limit the rights and freedoms of the majority of homeschoolers who are not mentally ill.

It is not difficult to slip the net of the local school district. We actually do not even know if these people claim homeschooling, it is very possible the writer of the article inserted that.

This is not about homeschooling, not at all. It is about finding the balance of preserving the civil rights of parents, of the mentally ill, innocent before proven guilty, and protecting children who cannot protect themselves.

[SoSoNosy]

Where's the statutory rape charge for the stepfather???

[momof2treasures]

There are many hypothetical cases where a small amount of supervision wouldn't matter at all. The point is would it have helped this girl? Would a requirement to produce a curriculum or test her have disproved that she was really being homeschooled? These aren't legit homeschoolers. If they actually had to lift a finger and show they were teaching the kids they may have been required to send ten to school. This has nothing to do with legit homeschooling and everything to do with claiming homeschooling to hide abuse and neglect. This girl could have stood a chance , she would have at least had access to sane people. She would have some possible way to reach out especially after the parents disappeared .

[nelliebelle1197]

Of course the school system should over see homeschooling. Any idiot can say they are homeschooling but that does not mean they are providing an education that can get a kid a job. In this case, it meant the kids were so isolated that this happened. My best friend's abusive ex is married to real winner who is uneducated and who has never worked. Her son from some 60 year old prison lifer has a ton of issues and is being "homeschooled". The kid is 12 and can barely read. Right now, she is on bedrest for a pregnancy and school is off for the rest of the year so he can take care of her.

Yeah, you hear about a rotten apple in public or private schools but the situations are usually rectified because of oversite and regulation. Unregulated homeschooling is bad for children and bad for society as a whole.

These kids never had a chance because at least kids in schools and kids in regulated homeschools have to be tested and curriculum has to be approved. And the kids have a chance to tell or for someone to notice abuse. Yeah, so what that it happens with kids in schools? It happens every where, but kids who have to go take a test or go to class everyday are on someone's radar and at least get a chance.

This is absolutely about homeschooling, where lack of regulation and oversite lead to physical abuse and the denial of basic civil and human rights to several children. Screw that ignorant blather about parents rights. Children have rights, too, and fucked up and ignorant parents don't have the right to deny kids basic opportunity or be free to do whatever the hell the want because of false sense of "freedom."

[Bethella]

How heartbreaking. What happened to her baby?

The most recently released information listed the baby in extremely critical condition in the hospital due to severe malnutrition and hypothermia from surviving on watered-down baby formula. :cry:

[Palimpsest]

I sincerely hope the charges are dismissed for the teen. The parents should be charged instead. Not sure what the laws are in Nevada but she is a victim not a perpetrator in my view.

I've seen the "OMG, the Problem is Not with Homeschooling It's With Bad People!" and "OMG, Any Ebil Gubmnt Regulations on Homeschooling will Fuck with MY Rights to Teach MY Child(ren) the Way I Want To!" debate too many times to want to argue it again.

My bottom line:

Bad People use the lack of regulation of homeschooling to hide horrendous child abuse. If Homeschoolers care at all about the victims of child abuse then they should want to help to protect them.

Complying with reasonable regulations should not be too onerous for Good People who are homeschooling properly. Instead of ranting against any and all regulations Good People who homeschool should actively work with legislators to help develop reasonable regulations. They are uniquely qualified to do so.

The following organizations have the right ideas (links not broken for obvious reasons):

Homeschoolers Anonymous Reaching Out (HARO) https://homeschoolersanonymous.wordpres ... ching-out/

Coalition for Responsible Home Education (CRHE)

http://www.responsiblehomeschooling.org/

CRHE also maintains Homeschooling's Invisible Children to show the extent of the problem. It is hard to keep it up-to-date. Read it and weep.

http://hsinvisiblechildren.org/

[formergothardite]

The thing is, no one actually knows how many people use the lack of homeschooling laws to hide abuse and to educationally neglect their children. Judging from the number of stories that are coming out from former homeschooled students whose parents exploited the lack of regulations and laws to abuse them, I would say the number is considerable higher than many people here would like to believe.

People should be scared at how little we actually know about children who are homeschooled.

[apple1]

My bottom line:

Bad People use the lack of regulation of homeschooling to hide horrendous child abuse. If Homeschoolers care at all about the victims of child abuse then they should want to help to protect them.

Complying with reasonable regulations should not be too onerous for Good People who are homeschooling properly. Instead of ranting against any and all regulations Good People who homeschool should actively work with legislators to help develop reasonable regulations. They are uniquely qualified to do so.

AMEN, sister!

[freehannie]

I agree that good homeschoolers should endorse regulations to prevent child abusers using the cover of homeschooling to continue abuse. I'd like to add that even if the homeschool community thinks the number of abuse cases are small and overblown, it is and will continue to be a huge P.R. problem for the movement. It undercuts the narrative that parents always have their children's best interests at heart and, therefore, there is no need for any form of supervision. I also think the anti-CPS vibe running through the movement keeps homeschoolers from reporting abuse even when it's clear that it's happening. So the question is: How is the homeschooling movement going to address these issues? Because failing to do anything about it isn't working. And the truth of the matter is there is no way to have absolute parental rights and protect children at the same time. Some kind of compromise needs to made and since children cannot protect themselves, it seems erring on the side of protecting children's interests makes sense. While certainly this particular case is a family that used "homeschooling" as a way to avoid detection, there are many cases where people who were genuinely homeschooling also abused their children and avoided detection because of isolation or because other homeschoolers were unwilling to report the abuse because of their fear of the government.

[Grimalkin]

I agree that good homeschoolers should endorse regulations to prevent child abusers using the cover of homeschooling to continue abuse. I'd like to add that even if the homeschool community thinks the number of abuse cases are small and overblown, it is and will continue to be a huge P.R. problem for the movement. It undercuts the narrative that parents always have their children's best interests at heart and, therefore, there is no need for any form of supervision. I also think the anti-CPS vibe running through the movement keeps homeschoolers from reporting abuse even when it's clear that it's happening. So the question is: How is the homeschooling movement going to address these issues? Because failing to do anything about it isn't working. And the truth of the matter is there is no way to have absolute parental rights and protect children at the same time. Some kind of compromise needs to made and since children cannot protect themselves, it seems erring on the side of protecting children's interests makes sense. While certainly this particular case is a family that used "homeschooling" as a way to avoid detection, there are many cases where people who were genuinely homeschooling also abused their children and avoided detection because of isolation or because other homeschoolers were unwilling to report the abuse because of their fear of the government.

I agree. The Homeschooling community needs o speak out against this. I very seriously considered HS. I joined a local online community, and met with some families and even organized a play date with local HS kids and parents to see how we fit in the mix. Apart from one very lovely mom pretty much everyone I met was haggard, worn out and seemed miserable. There were HS groups and they were even organized but there seemed very little support among them. I also wondered about some kids who seemed to have learning problems, and thought they could really benifit from some of the program's the public school offers.The big possibility the parents are unaware of the needs the kids may have. In the end we decided against it. I also need to mention since then I have met some nice families that HS in my area, in fact there is a family with five kids that live three houses down that HS...... I do find it odd that I lived here five years before I met them or even noticed they had kids though. On the other side of that I have noticed a lot of commercials for online K-12 HS.

[polecat]

Home schooler here ...

I think we can have more oversight without interfering with a parent's ability/right to educate his/her children as he/she sees fit.

1. Annual registration -- could be as simple as "Homey Family, 5 kids, grades 1 through 8"

2. End-of-year report -- just stating that the year was completed successfully (or not) or that the child will be moving on to the next phase of study (or not)

3. Medical checkup requirement -- requiring kids to have annual physicals is just common sense, and the doctor could simply send the paperwork to the BoE.

But these two cases (this one and the freezer case) have more problems than simply a lack of oversight for home schooling. There's a MYOB attitude -- where other people seem to see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil. No one wants to get involved. And kids stay inside more than previous generations. They are in there playing video games, watching TV, or doing something else -- but they are rarely playing outside anymore (a little boy lives across the street from me, but I never even knew it until we'd lived here more than a year -- and he goes to PS!). So it's fairly easy to conceal a kid even from the neighbor's sight. Finally, we live in a far more fluid society than we once did. Whereas people once could live in a place for many years -- even generations of them -- now people move fairly frequently, which means that people really aren't getting a chance to know one another.

I don't know how to fix any of those problems, though. They're largely cultural. How do you change an entire culture?

Also want to say -- please stop blaming mental illness. I've not seen any reliable source indicating that any of these monsters had a mental illness. It's an easy scapegoat, but it's not accurate. People can and do commit monstrous crimes when they are completely sane. It happens all the time.

[moodygirl86]

About the teenage girl in jail - could the parents have made her join in, with threats if she didn't comply? Since the stepfather raped her and got her pregnant, I can well imagine she was scared enough of him to agree to anything.

[formergothardite]

Home schooler here ...

I think we can have more oversight without interfering with a parent's ability/right to educate his/her children as he/she sees fit.

1. Annual registration -- could be as simple as "Homey Family, 5 kids, grades 1 through 8"

2. End-of-year report -- just stating that the year was completed successfully (or not) or that the child will be moving on to the next phase of study (or not)

3. Medical checkup requirement -- requiring kids to have annual physicals is just common sense, and the doctor could simply send the paperwork to the BoE.

The problem with just having this is that some parents feel it is their right to keep their children basically uneducated. Or just keep the girls uneducated because the only education a girl needs to have is to learn to keep house and have babies. :roll: So they will see fit to not provide a proper education for their children.

These families could easily(and do since there are people whose parents did this to them) register as a homeschool, send in the end of year report(in NC it is a test but absolutely nothing stops the parents from just filling out the test for the kid and even if the kids does do the test and it is shown that they aren't being taught nothing is done) and take their kids to the doctor. As long as they aren't physically abusing them the doctor can't really do anything because it most states it is perfectly legal to use homeschooling to not educate your child.