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Comment by roysting | Hacker News Reader

I think what is confusing is likely that the investigators/detectives were probably trying to make sure that the girl was actually in the house where the sex offender was registered or technically living, and not maybe kept somewhere else. A lot of detective work is building the case, but also confirming what you believe is actually true and you need the evidence to also request the warrant on factual grounds. They could have busted in the door of that house and found that there was no such brick to be found anywhere and the girl was sold off to someone else or something like that.

It’s really rather sick and deranged though that this kind of dynamic of women with children associating with sex offenders is not exactly rare. Frankly, I hope the mother was also charged.

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> Frankly, I hope the mother was also charged.

Would you want her charged if she didn't even know?

There is nothing in the article suggesting that the mother conspired with her boyfriend, or that she even knew he was a sex offender. I can imagine a scenario where the mother blames herself for not knowing and is utterly destroyed by misplaced guilt. Who knows what actually happened? The article wasn't about that.

> Would you want her charged if she didn't even know?

Yes? There are laws against child endangerment for a reason, and giving someone unrestricted accsss to your child without performing a basic background check very much falls into that territory.

> There are laws against child endangerment for a reason

What do you think the reason is? The deterrence value is zero.

I dunno. The skeeziest people I know would show up squeaky clean on paper, and several of the ones I trust the most have some kind of shit in their past, at least on paper.

> Would you want her charged if she didn't even know?

Yes. She is responsible for making sure her children is safe and well taken care of. I say this morally, not as a legal fact. She should know what they are up to, and she should notice if any of them are regularly abused over an interval of years.

Bringing the full weight of the legal system down on all parents whose children were harmed by third parties, regardless of whether the parents even knew anything about it, is monstrous cruelty.

Pray tell where did i say that all parents should be responsible whose children were harmed by a third part? I’m specifically talking about this case.

Unpredictable random acts of violence happen. Would be lunacy to punish the parents for that. On the other end of the scale here we are talking about abuse ongoing for years. By someone who the mother brought into the child’s life. Somewhere between those two ends of the scale i run out of sympathy for the excuse of “she didn’t know”. Where exactly the bundary is I don’t know. What i know is that in the scenairo described in the article i strongly believe we are in the “she should have known” territory.

Think it through. Do you think that the kid who was praying for someone to come help her, and for whom the law enforcement officers were sufficiently concerned about that they started learning brick manufacturing, do you think that kid was not at least a little bit off? You know, just enough for their mum’s to become concerned and start looking for an explanation?

You call what i say monstrous cruelty. I tell you what i think is monstrous cruelty: no kid, ever, in the history of humankind has ever had the opportunity to consent to being born. Giving life to a kid is a choice. Especially in this day and age. By choosing to father a kid or give birth to a kid one becomes responsible for the wellbeing of said kid. How far and how deep that responsibility goes can be debated. I strongly believe that the parents (both the mom and the dad) is responsible who they bring into their young kid’s life. They are responsible for knowing what is going on with the kid. (Not necessarily every step and every breath of the kid, but you know the large stuff, like for example are they being sexually abused.) The parents are also responsible to have a relationship with their kids where they would be confided by their kids if something goes terribly wrong. So the kid would go ask them for help, before praying for some help comming from who knows where. These are basics. And these are separate but interlacing failures on the part of the mother. And that is why i think what she did (or didn’t do) is monstrously cruel.

I'm reminded of the Gene Weingarten's 2010 Pulitzer Prize winning article, Fatal Distraction, on parents whose children have died from hyperthermia after being left in cars[1].

Similar to this case, some people believe that such parents should be criminally liable, and that there cannot possibly be any extenuating circumstances — despite the correlation between the rise of back-seat children's car-seat laws and the prevalence of such deaths.

> Think it through.

I have. The article provides very little to go on, and it is not hard to imagine that an abuser who is clever enough to publish CSAM material online for years without getting caught is clever enough to keep the abuse hidden from the mother and manipulate a child into keeping their trauma secret.

> (Not necessarily every step and every breath of the kid, but you know the large stuff, like for example are they being sexually abused.)

There are vast numbers of parents who do not find out for years[2]:

    73% of child victims do not tell anyone
    about the abuse for at least a year.
    45% of victims do not tell anyone for
    at least 5 years. Some never disclose.

Given how often sexual abuse happens, we're talking about millions of parents. I do not believe that every last one of them is morally culpable because they did not "know the large stuff, like for example are [their children] being sexually abused" and that they should be criminally charged.

[1] https://mitchellhamline.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/9/2012/...

[2] https://cachouston.org/prevention/child-sexual-abuse-facts/

They always know.

My mother worked in mental healthcare and she's always told me that "the sisterhood" doesn't exist.

No, parents do not always "know" about child sexual abuse.

I cited a study about this elsethread[1]. And "Lucy" was young (no older than 12, possibly as young as 7) when the rapes began, which correlates with a reluctance to disclose.

It is possible that the mother knew, but it is far from certain. The article didn't provide that context, because it chronicled detective work that led through a different chain of clues to crack the case. An obsession over maternal guilt has arisen here in the comments that was not present in the article.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47042396#47049735

There often is a realm where they should have known but didn't want to admit it to themselves.

No one wants to admit that their child was raped, even if they are open to the possibility — so your assertion reduces down to "there often is a realm where they should have known".

Because the article doesn't give detail, we don't know. The mother could have forcefully spurned explicit disclosures from her daughter. She could even have participated in the abuse.

But there's also a possibility that since the perp was clever enough to hide identifying details while publishing CSAM online that he was clever enough to hide abuse from those close by.

I would condemn participation but forgive ignorance. Other commenters here will never forgive the mother no matter what.

Why just the mother? What about her absentee father?

I agree that the singling out of the mother for condemnation in this comment section is conspicuous and dismaying — thank you for pointing it out. Nevertheless, I would offer the father the same grace that I think the mother deserves, and I think you will be sympathetic.

We know little of the mother's circumstances, and we know basically none of the father's. He may not even be alive. He could be an "absentee", or even an abuser himself — we have no information. But he might also be active in Lucy's life yet tragically unaware of his daughter's plight.

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