A 9-year-old was found locked in a van since 2024, malnourished and unable to walk

Not even a want, a need. They should never even feel for a second that they don’t have it.

As a father myself, the way I see it is kids don't "want" a safe and stable place; that's all they know until they don't. It's so fucked up when I see stories like this and realize "damn, that child never knew things could be bad until they were." A well taken care of child never thinks to themselves how happy they are to be safe and in a good home because that's all they know, I can't even imagine the fear and confusion that happens in their innocent minds when they get put through this. Truly heartbreaking, honestly glad the kid at least survived because the stories hardly end up that way.

I read this book twice when I was 14, I’m 29 now and still remember it. It broke my heart.

Just the knowledge that their brother is treated that way is a threat that the girls could be, too. And nobody's come to help him, so nobody would be helping them.

Not always. I remember a story about a boy who was, among other things, forced to eat out of a dog bowl on the floor. He was the oldest of his siblings, and, as adults, the next oldest sibling once tentatively asked him if a dim memory he had of watching those incidents from the kitchen table really happened. That is also on the *lower* end of stories like these. For something on the higher end, there's the story of Sylvia Likens. I won't detail it here in case you don't have the stomach for the scale of the abuse inflicted, but the "caretaker" in question had taken in both Sylvia and her younger sister. Sylvia's sister was not subjected to the same torture Sylvia was.

Yes, and even if they were treated without additional wrongdoings towards them, just being witnesses to abuse is a form of abuse. It can f*** with them to the extent that they could also join in on abusing their brother. Simply out of a survival mechanism. Not saying that this happened, just that it can. This is basically what happened to Dave Pelzer. The encounters with his siblings in his biography "A Child Called It" were really sad and horrific. But they were also under extreme stress. Only the parents can be blamed.

She bore seven kids. One was stillborn, three were kept in the basement with her, and three more were allowed to live in the rest of the house with their grandparents. The two groups of kids were kept completely apart, each group only learning of the existence of the other group after the imprisonment of the four people in the basement was finally exposed.

Josef Fritzl lived a few houses away from me. Ever since that happened, ive been thinking about exactly that.

There are people locked away for their Social Security checks. Is scary to think of what your neighbours might be doing.

Shit like this is why Andy Weir's "The Egg" reads like a horror.

This case haunts me.

A man was found near me a year or so ago who had been locked in his room, barely fed to keep him weak, until he was 30. He finally set his room on fire so that he could be rescued by the fire department!

Is that where the show 'unbreakable kimmy smith' is losely based on?

I just read that whole wiki and it really feels like there is a LOT of information missing there

What's really sick is how the Mormon church and the state of Utah enabled their abusers. The older sister had called for a welfare check on the kids (the middle two were living unsupervised for weeks at a time) and they didn't even bother to get eyes on them. Showed up at the house, no one answered so they just left. And Jodi had been openly abusing kids for ages with many complaints and she was in tight with the LDS leadership.

This is fascinating. She bought the house she was held captive in and as of 2017 still owned it

It's fucked up reading how the defense team is claiming that the guy is the only one claiming that he was held captive when the first episode is full of people corroborating the idea that he was held captive.

I genuinely would lol my maternal instinct know no limits

I also choose this girls mom

These things tend to "bend" a person a certain way. Some physical effects never get better, resources become wiped out, and other extremely unusual circumstances tend to follow. I'm currently completing my third degree (medicine), this time on a full scholarship, and have had a fairly successful career (and have patents), but life will pretty much never reach the level of peace and stability everyone else has. I spend about five hours a day trying to manage the dysautonomic condition that resulted, and of course have expenses (over $30k/yr after insurance) and a complete lack of family support.

Old police station with cells underground? Knock a bunch of those walls out and that would give you so much basement space. I'm glad that my first thought is about the remodelling opportunities

Just remember its easy to LOVE your child too. Hard to be a parent. But very easy to love them

Or what can often be worse. Competition.

Hopefully that statement ends up needing a "yet"

Thank you for your kind words. If I die tomorrow I know I’ll always be humbled by holding witness or helping to change some really bad outcomes. It comes at a cost. I love the analogy coal and my home city of Pittsburgh go hand and hand.

It's messed up, but blaming oneself is such circumstances is the easy choice. What will happen next is that he will be told again and again that it wasn't his fault, which is of course true, but to accept it would mean accepting that he was made to suffer for no sensible reason, just because his family cared so little for him that he wasn't even human to them. That's much harder to accept. 

TLDR my family sucks, apologies for the ramble My father is similar. When my nephew was at the age where he would make noise just to make noise, my father completely freaked out. Went into a huge rant about how my nephew might be autistic and how much it concerned him. Asked if my sister had taken acetaminophen during her pregnancy. Said that it would all be fine because, according to him, autism is due to the parents failing the child, but my dad is amazing and smart enough and talented enough that he can teach it out of my nephew. My father has autistic traits (though it’s overshadowed by his narcissism). He probably ranted about my nephew because he didn’t like the noises he was making, but his selfishness made him lash out rather than reflect/admit he was being unreasonable and regulate himself. No one dares say anything because he’d explode. Even worse, I’m likely autistic, too. My mom shushes me/changes the subject when I talk about it to her because she also carries stigma towards autism and, more importantly, she knows my dad would freak out if he heard me. And my traits are much more obvious. Hearing him rant like that, I realized that my dad has always hated me. It’s no surprise I was made the scapegoat of the family.

I was thinking more about winters