© UnknownEmotional neglect is the norm in modern, narcissistic society. Childhood abuse is widespread as well.
An ex-prosecutor and his wife have been sentenced for endangering the welfare of two adopted Ethiopian children after county welfare officials found the boy had been underfed and the girl physically abused.
Douglas Barbour, 35, who resigned from the state attorney general's office last year, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor counts in June and was sentenced to five years' probation on Monday. Kristen Barbour, a 32-year-old stay-at-home mother who was the children's primary caretaker,
was sentenced to six to 12 months in alternative housing followed by four years' probation.
The Franklin Park couple was charged in October 2012, when the boy was 6 and found to be malnourished, and the girl was 18 months old and had multiple head fractures in various stages of healing.
"
It was like they were breaking a horse, not raising a child," said Assistant Allegheny County District Attorney Jennifer DiGiovanni. "It was unconscionable that this went on. The very minute (the boy) was taken out of their care he began to thrive."
Kristen Barbour told the court she decided to adopt the children in March 2012 after making church missions trips to developing countries.
Doctors found evidence of abuse when the boy was treated for an infection in September 2012.
The boy weighed 37.5 pounds, nearly 10 pounds less than when he had been adopted, and told investigators he was forced to eat meals in the bathroom or stand alone in there whenever he urinated or defecated in his pants. The girl's injuries have never been explained.The Barbours have regained custody of two biological children, ages 2 and 5, who were found
not to be abused.
Another couple has since adopted the Ethiopian children. The boy told his new adoptive mother, Alison Patterson, that it hurt when Kristen Barbour "scribbled my face in the carpet when I peed," Patterson testified Monday.
Kristen Barbour told the court, "I'm not a monster as some have portrayed me." She added: "I wish the children a good life. I hope they find it in their heart to forgive."
Through the '70s I bought and read at least twice every one of Arthur Janov's many works.
This was stupendously hard work because unlike the very many "feel good" books making the rounds then, and in between, and now, Janov's works take one -into- the pain one represses within one's self, explaining on the way the depth, largely inaccessible outside a truly therapeutic setting, the nature and the depth of the woundedness that virtually everyone of us represses, at huge cost, 24/7/365/our entire lives.
Of these works, "The Feeling Child" bears full force upon the fact that in the [non-psychopathic] child/parent relationship it is the child who, by dint of being wholly dependent and wholly malleable, is the more important part of the relationship.
From a particularly germane review of the book on Amazon [Link] we read the following:
"Despite the age of this book the information it contains is still very relevant.
Finally a book on how to raise children from the child's point of view.
This book explains how the [organic and therefore satiable] needs of the child are paramount and must be [met] in order to avoid psychological trauma to the child which results in behavioral, as well as physical problems, later in life.
The book explains how parents are often so cut off from their own feelings that they overlook the needs of their children despite the best of intentions.
[It] includes background information on how traumatic events in childbirth and throughout childhood are stored neurologically to produce the psychobiological condition of neurosis. Simple to read yet very scientific.However, even though the book contains background information on the formation of neurosis, I would highly recommend reading one of his other books in addition to this one in order to get a better understanding of why it is so important to raise children from the child's perspective."