{"id":142,"date":"2003-11-07T03:05:00","date_gmt":"2003-11-07T08:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wordpress\/2003\/11\/blaming_the_victims\/"},"modified":"2003-11-07T03:05:00","modified_gmt":"2003-11-07T08:05:00","slug":"blaming_the_victims","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/2003\/11\/blaming_the_victims\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaming the Victims"},"content":{"rendered":"

Not being close to the Jackson household in Collingswood, N.J., I’m not sure exactly how blame should be divvied up for the starved condition of the four adopted children (none of the boys, aged 9 to 19, weighed more than 50 pounds). But I know it shouldn’t be allocated the way Rev. Harry L. Thomas Jr., is doing it. Thomas, testifying before the House Committee on Ways and Means<\/a> on behalf of the parents, attempted to blame the kids for their condition<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Thomas testified that some of the children had medical conditions which made it very difficult to get the nourishment they needed. He said Bruce [the oldest child] has had an unusual psychological eating disorder for years.
\n“(Bruce) voluntarily brings up food back from his stomach to his mouth very much like a cow chewing its cud,” Thomas explained. “At Central school he was caught stealing lunches, eating them and throwing up in the kid’s lunch bag. At Carson School there was more eating and throwing up. The final straw was when he stole food and threw up on the teacher. This is the reason they started home schooling,” Thomas said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The hearing transcript isn’t up yet, but I understand from T.V. news reports that Mr. Thomas went even further in trying attribute the childrens’ status to their physical or emotional problems.
\nI don’t care what kind of problems these boys may have. To hold them up as the reason that they all weigh 45 pounds is ridiculous. Adults neglected these kids, and someone has to be held accountable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Not being close to the Jackson household in Collingswood, N.J., I’m not sure exactly how blame should be divvied up for the starved condition of the four adopted children (none of the boys, aged 9 to 19, weighed more than 50 pounds). But I know it shouldn’t be allocated the way Rev. Harry L. Thomas […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}