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A mother and father in Pennsylvania are charged with locking their 6-year-old twins in their room and starving them for years in yet another case that makes you wonder why some people even choose to become parents. One of the twins escaped earlier this year and was found wandering in his neighborhood by a Good Samaritan, weighing just 30 pounds and covered in bruises.
The discovery chills me to the bone. But almost as chilling is how easy courts are going on the children's parents ... or at least one of them.
Their mother, Roxanne Taylor, faces several charges, including aggravated assault and child endangerment. She still has her day in court, but the boys' father, Edward Bucholz, has already been convicted. He pleaded guilty last month, and reports indicate he faces just two to four years in prison.
That's it.
Four years.
Less time than those kids have been on the planet. Less time, it seems, than those children have been treated like prisoners, locked away in a filthy bedroom with a potty chair, with a window that opened onto a 7-foot drop to the ground.
In four years, neighbors of Taylor and Bucholz say they've only seen those kids two times. When they were rescued, the little boys were said to be covered in feces and sporting stomachs distended like children who'd been starved for a significant amount of time. Although they're 6 years old, the starving boys were functioning on just a 2-year-old's level.
They've had at least four years of childhood stolen from them, and their father isn't even facing more time in prison for making it happen?
The eye for an eye code isn't exactly practical in America, but it's cases like this that force you to question whether we're hard enough on our criminals. Here two kids were brought close to death by a person supposed to love them, their childhoods stolen, and the perpetrator could spend less time in jail than they did locked in their bedrooms.
What do you think would be an appropriate punishment here?
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