Roy And Ruby Stephens Charged With Murder After Baby Found Starved To Death

My first question would be, why are people such as this allowed to even breed. Second question, didn't the "relatives" notice anything amiss?

The parents of a 22-day-old baby found starved to death in Florida have been charged with first-degree murder, police said on Tuesday, accusing them of neglecting the suffering infant.

Ruby Stephens, 23, and Roy Stephens, 48, of Indiana were visiting relatives in central Florida on Dec. 23 when they called for emergency help after discovering the baby was unresponsive in their car, according to Lakeland Police.

Betsey Kee Stephens was declared dead at the hospital.

"She suffered tremendously over the 22 days that she was alive," Mike Link, assistant chief of Lakeland Police, told a news conference.

Roy And Ruby Stephens Charged With Murder After Baby Found Starved To Death

Parents of dead teen plead guilty to negligent homicide | wivb.com

Two more pieces of scum out of circulation,,,

In August, Jeremy and Astrid were charged with criminally negligent homicide, for not getting Marissa the medical attention and care she needed.

Astrid — a legal resident of Germany, not of the U.S. — pleaded guilty to attempted criminally negligent homicide. She faces up to a year in jail, along with deportation after she is released from custody.

Jeremy — who was additionally charged with sex abuse in a separate case for having sex with a victim under the age of 13 — pleaded guilty to both criminally negligent homicide and second degree attempted course of sexual conduct against a child. Both are class E felonies, and he faces up to eight years in prison under the two charges, and 10 years of post-release supervision.

Parents of dead teen plead guilty to negligent homicide | wivb.com

Pennsylvania Couple Plead Not Guilty In Starvation Death Of Disabled Son

A Pennsylvania mother and father accused of letting their 9-year-old disabled son starve to death last summer entered pleas of not guilty on Thursday.

Jarrod Tutko, 38, and Kimberly Tutko, 39, appeared in shackles for their arraignment in the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas on charges of criminal homicide and endangering the welfare of a child.

The couple is accused in the August death of their son, Jarrod Tutko Jr., who suffered from Fragile X Syndrome, a form of autism.

Police arrested the father on Aug. 1 after finding the boy's decomposing body in a feces-smeared bedroom of their Harrisburg home. The child weighed 17 pounds, according to the county coroner.

Kimberly Tutko, who called police, said her husband told her the boy had been dead for days and that she had been unaware because she was caring for another child on another floor of their four-bedroom duplex.

Pennsylvania Couple Plead Not Guilty In Starvation Death Of Disabled Son

786 Abused Kids Died In Plain View Of Authorities: Report

"We all agree that we cannot solve a problem this complex until we agree it exists."

David Sanders, Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities

At least 786 children died of abuse or neglect in the U.S. in a six-year span in plain view of child protection authorities — many of them beaten, starved or left alone to drown while agencies had good reason to know they were in danger, The Associated Press has found.

To determine that number, the AP canvassed the 50 states, the District of Columbia and branches of the military — circumventing a system that does a terrible job of accounting for child deaths. Many states struggled to provide numbers. Secrecy often prevailed.

Most of the 786 children whose cases were compiled by the AP were under the age of 4. They lost their lives even as authorities were investigating their families or providing some form of protective services because of previous instances of neglect or violence or other troubles in the home.

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Many factors can contribute to the abuse dilemma nationwide: The child protective services system is plagued with worker shortages and a serious overload of cases. Budgets are tight, and nearly 40 percent of the 3 million child abuse and neglect complaints made annually to child protective services hotlines are "screened out" and never investigated.

Also, insufficient training for those who answer child abuse hotlines leads to reports being misclassified, sometimes with deadly consequences; a lack of a comprehensive national child welfare database allows some abusers to avoid detection by moving to different states; and a policy that promotes keeping families intact can play a major role in the number of deaths.

Because no single, complete set of data exists for the deaths of children who already were being overseen by child welfare caseworkers, the information compiled over the course of AP's eight-month investigation represents the most comprehensive statistics publicly available.

786 Abused Kids Died In Plain View Of Authorities: Report