Meanwhile in the woman on the other was homeless and trying to get her life on better footing. She had a job interview and could not get anyone to watch her kids, so she left them in the car, with window open and went inside to do her job interview.. This mom was arrested and charged w/ a felony, her kids were taken away.. Both women live in Arizona..
Catalina Clouser, then aged 19, was arrested after she returned to the place she had left her baby in 2012
A pot-smoking Arizona mom who got high before driving off with her baby on the car roof has avoided being sent to jail.
Catalina Clouser, 21, was astonishingly only sentenced to 16 years of probation after pleading guilty to child abuse and DUI.
Clouser was just 19-years-old in 2012 when she went to a friend's Phoenix home to smoke marijuana after getting upset at her boyfriend Manuel Pena who'd been busted DUI.
The 21-year-old pleaded guilty to child abuse and misdemeanor DUI.On going to leave, she placed her then 2-month-old baby on the roof of her car. She then drove 12 miles home before realizing the baby wasn't inside the vehicle.
The tiny tot was discovered by a passerby, still in a car seat and miraculously unharmed, in the middle of a highway.
Before being sentenced, Clouser admittted that her actions were 'horrible.'
Clouser returned to the scene and was arrested.
She initially pleaded not guilty to the charges, but later revised her plea and was sentenced Wednesday, according to CBS5.
Before being handed down her punishment, she told Maricopa County Superior Judge Cynthia Bailey: "I just want to say, I do know that what I did was horrible.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/phoenix-mom-high-drove-baby-car-roof-probation-article-1.1756526#ixzz2z66wK3AW
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Shanesha Taylor, a homeless woman living in Scottsdale, Arizona, allegedly left her two children, ages two and six months, in a car for at least 45 minutes while she completed a job interview. She's now been arrested for felony child abuse and her children taken away.
I first saw this on Think Progress, and it has also made the Smoking Gun.
The basics of the story are that Ms. Taylor is homeless with two children and currently unemployed. When she received a call for a job interview last Thursday, lacking other alternatives, she left her two children in her car with the windows cracked while she completed the interview. Someone heard the children crying and called the police, with Ms. Taylor arriving at her car 45 minutes after the police did. Ms. Taylor was arrested on two counts of felony child abuse and her children removed to Child Protective Services. She is currently in jail and her children will likely be placed in foster care.
I think her mug shot above says all that needs to be said on how Ms. Taylor feels about losing her children.
While the vast majority of comments on Think Progress and the Smoking Gun were sympathetic and were able draw the rightful conclusion that the poor make poor choices because there are essentially no good alternatives to be had, I'm sure Ms. Taylor will be excoriated by conservatives for: 1) choosing to be homeless in the first place, 2) choosing to not have a job, 3) driving an SUV when she could have spent that money on child care...the potential list is endless. The game is to blame someone who is in fact a victim herself, while extracting the maximum penalty from her and society (since we will be paying for her incarceration and the care of her children while she is in the system), all while enriching themselves through yet another poor/black/POC/single mother added to the prison industrial complex.
It serves absolutely no purpose to criminalize this woman...yes, she made an error in judgement, one she almost certainly knew she was making, but a choice she felt she had no other recourse but to make. It will be very easy for many to say what she should have done, but unless they've been in her specific situation, it's all speculation...the brutal, baseless form of judgement that the world seems to specialize in these days. She did not get the job, of course, and is now looking at prison time, with her children most likely taken away for a significant period of time.
There is a fund set up for her here.
8:08 PM PT: I just wanted to include some additional information, since it seems that some are interpreting this diary as call to not hold Ms. Taylor accountable in any manner.
The hourly temperature breakdown for Phoenix on March 20, 2014, shows it at 68 degrees at 11 am, 71 degrees at 12, 75 degrees at 1 pm, and 78 degrees at 2 pm.
No comments:
Post a Comment