The Associated Press has picked up on an abuse case involving “home-schooling”:
PHOENIX — Authorities say a grand jury has indicted a Phoenix couple on child abuse charges involving their 14-year-old daughter.
Police say the malnourished girl was locked in a bathroom without running water for two months, beaten with metal rods and forced to exercise until exhaustion because her father said she had stolen food and cheated on a home-school test.
The ‘news’ in this post is that the AP has picked up this story. Expect another round of anti-homeschooling fervor.
Homeschooling has been implicated in abuse and HEM has covered abuse cases in the past. Abuse is abuse, and, as in this case, it is a shocking, sad thing. I will, once again, ask the larger hard question – Who is encouraging these families to torture their kids? They need to be called out.
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Some more thoughts:
Two Recent Custody Cases involving Homeschooling
Thoughtful speculation:
Are Scott and Andrea Bass a Quiverfull couple?
HEM is running a piece on neglect and abuse laws in our upcoming March-April 2010 issue.
HEM
Helen
Tracy
mark
marynix
ann-lahrson-fisher
valerie
sandi
david
You only need to do a brief survey of the statistics country wide of the most heinous to the most benign cases of child abuse and you will quickly uncover the fact that the majority of them have nothing to do with homeschooling or its children. Yes, they must find out what the factor is that causes this most monstrous expression of behavior but at the same time refrain from blindly grasping at the homeschooling movement as a cause when it conveys no such indulgence in such matters by the very nature of its message to share,explore and grow as a family.