Despicable. Unthinkable. Inhuman. Unforgivable! However, the one word that cannot be used to describe the sickening child-abuse case of a 16-year-old girl and her 11-year old brother being kept prisoner in their own Carson City apartment under starving conditions is "irresponsible."
That word hints of absolution. If allegations are proven to be true, then the only pardon to the mother and grandmother of these sinfully forsaken children, as well as their mother's boyfriend, is for prison security to growl the word "pardon" to them as they slam their heads full force into a prison wall.
The barbarous act suspected of these 21st century beasts was a horrendous exhibition of deliberated and inner-directed depravity that this city has not yet seen. How is this act of unspeakable crime different than that found in Dachau or Buchenwald or any of the other prison camps during the years of Nazi terrorism?
The difference is as big as our nation's capital. This is America. These are our children. These children were allegedly savaged by their own immediate family, and a live-in boyfriend. Starved like concentration-camp victims, locked in a bathroom of an apartment that may as well have served as modern day Holocaustic barracks, beaten, and isolated. Just outside of that converted death camp, in other rooms of the apartment dwelled three healthy children, ages 9 to 17. These were the siblings of the two abused children whose bones may now appear to be concealed by only onion skin.
According to a 2004 CDC (Centers for Diseased Children) report, more than 5,000 children are killed each year in the United States as a result of violence. Many of those children are victims of domestic abuse. Numerous studies even indicate that more than 3 million children in the United States incur long-term health impairments - both mental and chemical - as results of witnessing their mother's abuse at the hands of an intimate partner.
If found guilty, the three adults of the household in my view should suffer the charges aligned with intent to murder. Actually, if these kids die, what about murder charges? I'm surprised the kids are still alive. They seem to have been cast into a neo-Nazi caldron of animalistic maltreatment - the type of malignity that bore depravation of nutrition, humanity, education ... and life.
What's left are two hellish anatomical specimens that are supposed to be children - children whose cadaverously sculptured flesh lockers barely hold their intestines in place, offering a clearly outlined map of evaporated bowel canals. But the atrocity of these poor innocent children's physical and mental descent is no match for the abhorrent savagery allegedly imposed by the three adults who employed themselves as detestable wardens to the lives and souls of the helpless youth.
There remains a sack of facts that will unquestionably be fished out of this tank of stagnated filth. Questions like, Why didn't the 17-year old - one of the three chosen children who were for some reason not included in this lurid and sadistic home experiment - ever speak up to authorities? How about the other two healthy children of the household? Not one word to anyone?
Other questions more critical than those will surface, I am sure. The moral of this story? Even the small, closely-knit community that Carson City offers us is not out of reach to the injurious long arms of death-skirting child abuse.
n John DiMambro is publisher of the Nevada Appeal. Write to him at jdimambro@nevadaappeal.com.