Thursday, September 25, 2014

Don't Click - It Just Encourages Them

Just in case you were under the impression that all the awful behavior directed at women and children was found in and around the National Football League, here's this: An Alabama woman accused of running her nine-year-old granddaughter to death as punishment for eating forbidden chocolates and lying about it was supposed to go on trial on Monday. 
Joyce Hardin Garrard, 49, stands accused of forcing Savannah Hardin to run non-stop for three hours in February 2012. Authorities say the girl collapsed, went into seizures and died days later at a Birmingham hospital.  Etowah County Sheriff's spokeswoman Natalie Barton said Savannah died from dehydration and low sodium, a condition common in marathon runners. Savannah was not a marathon runner. She was a naughty nine-year-old girl. A naughty nine-year-old girl with preexisting medical conditions. So, did grandma murder this little girl? Murder? With intent? How could it be so?
Not really that difficult to imagine, I suppose given the age in which we find ourselves living. Not in a world where little boys are kept in cages. Horrible stories of cruelty and abuse that make Stephen King cringe. It turns our collective stomachs and makes people like me click on the link to find out more. That's the worst part. Slowing down on the cyber highway to look at the pictures that have piled up next to the "news" median. How could we let this happen? How could one person be so horrible? How can I find out more?
Well, the good news is that the trial has been pushed back to February, which will give me and those like me the chance to find out even more of the grisly details. In another four months, Lifetime could have the movie version ready to go. Back in the town we call Reality, we recognize that this kind of thing has been happening forever. Everyone knew a story about some horrible thing that happened to a kid. The worst of those are the ones that end with a phrase like, "and it was her own grandmother that did it." Awful. Horrible. Terrible. And awfully horribly terribly fascinating. Tune in a little later to see how that lawsuit Savannah's dad is filing against the doctors who may or may not have misdiagnosed her condition after she had been tortured by grandma. Until your favorite NFL player gets suspended for running over the team's mascot with his Humvee. 

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