4um: Police: Family Lived In Filth, Bathed In Pond

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Title: Police: Family Lived In Filth, Bathed In Pond
Source: www.local6.com
URL Source: http://www.local6.com/news/9728253/detail.html
Published: Aug 24, 2006
Author: Staff
Post Date: 2006-08-24 12:55:16 by Ferret Mike
Keywords: None
Views: 243
Comments: 22

Two parents in Lake County, Fla., were arrested after their children were found living in a filthy home without running water, according to a Local 6 News report.
Police arrested Christine Foels and her fiancée Christopher Curran after receiving an anonymous call from a neighbor about their filthy home. The pair was living in the home with two girls, ages 5 and 4 months.
"Investigators with the Department of Children and Families said the conditions were more than disturbing," Local 6 reporter Louis Bolden said. "They said it was criminal."
Officers said a refrigerator inside the home was filled with rotting food. Also, the house has not had running water in more than a month, so the toilets were filled with feces.
"They bathed in a pond that was in the back of the property," Lake County sheriff's Sgt. Christine Mysinger said.
The baby's crib was also used as a trash bin, the report said.
Foels said her family is just going through some financial problems. She said she has not done anything wrong.
"I don't deserve this," Foels said. "I didn't do anything wrong. I'm not a bad mother. I'm doing everything they are asking me to do and now I'm here."
Foels and Curran are being held in the Lake County Jail on $5,000 bond.
(Video of story in header link)
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#4. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
personally - I don't feel good about government taking kids away from parents. kids typically go into foster home system and it is in itself an abusive thing to do to the kids. even in a dirty home kids are almost always better off with parents.
look at the money spent bashing the parents. does that help the kids? perhaps the money should be spent helping the parents.
perhaps we should think about how over-valued US dollar pushing down wages if we care about children. over-valued US dollar helps rich people, but it destroys wages for the poor and middle income because it makes a situation where no domestic industry can compete with foreign based competitors due to the over-valuation of our currency. how humanitarian are we when we do that to our poor people? And then take their children.

Red Jones posted on 2006-08-24 14:00:53 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
#8. To: Red Jones (#4)
I have to disagree, Red. As someone who grew up with serious family problems (alcoholic father, mentally ill mother), I usually strongly feel that children should be taken from their families, whether it's to be in foster care, adopted or placed in orphanages. I had the opportunity to be adopted a couple of times and the agencies ended up putting me back with my family. BIG mistake, and something I have always regretted. They weren't bad people, or abusive - just neglectful and sick. I actually preferred the orphanage I was in for a while. I just hate to see abusive or neglectful people get these poor little kids back - it usually means the kids will have little or no chance at life.
Which reminds me - we need to bring back orphanages. It's just so much better than much of what passes for foster care out there, and I think they've just gotten a unnecessarily bad rap. Yeah it sucks not to have a family, but it sucks more to have an abusive or neglectful one.

mehitable posted on 2006-08-24 14:13:25 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
Replies to Comment # 8.
#10. To: mehitable, Red Jones (#8)
I'm not sure the mom's so bad here -- though she sure can pick 'em.
Other reports:

"I'm a clean freak," Foels said Wednesday during an interview at the Lake County Jail. "I bleach everything."
The house did have bugs, "but it was clean," Foels said.
Foels said the house had no running water, but she blamed that on her landlord, who she said didn't address her complaints about the lack of water.
"They just caught us at a bad time," she said.
The landlord could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Foels said she and her boyfriend of nine years were trying to find another place to live when the state Department of Children & Families began investigating in June.
Meanwhile, the family was pulling buckets of water from the lake to flush the toilets, she said.
Investigators did not find any evidence that the girls had been physically abused, but they did remove Foels' daughters because of the living conditions and put them in foster care.

And:

"I'm a clean freak. I clean that house all the time," she said.
Foals, along with boyfriend Christopher Curran, were arrested on a warrant for child abuse. In June, a DCF investigator found holes kicked in the walls, feces in the toilets, prescription pills on the floor and no running water. The investigator added that Foals even bathed her children in a nearby lake.

Not sure I'd trust that source.

"We weren't taking baths in the lake. We were going to the neighbors' houses and taking baths," Foals said.
She explained the house was in disarray because she was just released from the hospital for an ear infection.
"They had just got there maybe half an hour after I got back from the hospital," she said.
Sergeant Christie Mysinger said the water was not on for about a month.
"We would never want people think we would arrest them for being poor or low in finances. That's not the case here. This case is of failure to provide a safe environment for children," Mysinger said.
Foals said she had asked her landlord to fix the water pump time and time again, but it was never fixed.
"We were in the process of moving out that Friday, with Chris' paycheck and my paycheck, but I guess were weren't out of there fast enough," she said.

Tauzero posted on 2006-08-24 14:22:05 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
#14. To: mehitable (#8)
Which reminds me - we need to bring back orphanages. It's just so much better than much of what passes for foster care out there, and I think they've just gotten a unnecessarily bad rap. Yeah it sucks not to have a family, but it sucks more to have an abusive or neglectful one.

I am sorry to learn of your childhood.
BigBrother couldn't make any $$$ from private, church-run, children's homes; so they had to go.
For most of her working career, my mother taught HomeEc at a christian children's home where the vast majority of the kids were not orphans, but were either unwanted by their parents, or the legal system gave them "one last chance" to get it together before going to jail. The home was trying to do right by the kids - not for the money, not to drug'em up, not to let them get into the prison system, but to give them the attention, care, and mostly love, that was missing from their lives.

Lod posted on 2006-08-24 14:45:12 ET Reply Untrace Trace Private Reply
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