104 Engaging Media - Assignment 2 Remediation Project
Grimm's Fairy Tales: The Wilful Child
Startling developments in the Grimmville child murder case today. I have been following this case with great interest: an eight year old girl who died after a long illness, was re-examined by the coroner after her mother exhibited strange behaviour: beating the fresh grave with a stick, yelling that her "willful daughter" was still "disobeying her"! One can only imagine what was going on in her head.
The mother, now accused of killing her daughter through Munchausen's by proxy, has introduced a new defense: she is claiming God caused her child's illness to punish the girl for her disobedience.
The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, began complaining of weakness and joint pain last August. She was examined by specialists, including leading pediatricians at Grimville General Hospital. After a two month hospitalisation it seemed she would make a full recovery, and was discharged back home to her mother. Two weeks later, she was rushed back to emergency not breathing. She could not be resuscitated.
I am wondering, why did nobody pick up on this poor child's troubles earlier? It's been revealed during court proceedings that the Department of Child Services had a case file on the family, documenting excessive punishment and a harsh, overbearing parenting style on the part of the mother. Why this wasn't connected to her sudden illness, I don't know.
A nurse was quoted last week in the Grimmville Register claiming she overheard the accused yelling "God has no pleasure in you, he has let you become ill". Why did she not come forward with this evidence earlier? Had somebody intervened, two lives may have been saved.
The accused is now claiming God plagued her daughter with her fatal illness, as she was so misbehaved and disobeyed her mother so much she was no longer fit to continue living. If this isn't a case for an insanity defense, I don't know what is. At the time of her arrest, the mother claims her daughter's arm was rising out of the earth to disobey her from beyond death, and she had to beat her down to finally put her to rest.
In the end it was this bizarre behaviour that led to some answers for her daughter, as upon a second examination traces of arsenic were found in the toxicology report.
Now I'm only a crime blogger, but what is this world coming to in recent times? Child murder, murderers thinking their victims will come back as zombies from the grave? Surely this has something to do with the depraved graphic violence that pervades the media. Nothing this disgusting would have happened two hundred years ago! What do you think?
