I have the feeling that this guy has been taking care of these kids -- food and a place to live -- for quite a while.
It reminds me (in some ways) of my best friend. He's dead now, and his own kids grown, but over the years I knew him he had a fair number of different kids living at his house. You would never have known it to look at him, he was this big leather wearing biker kind of guy, but inside he was pure marshmallow. He didn't let these kids stay there because he particularly liked kids, he rarely really talked to them at all, he let them stay because they had nowhere else safe to go. They had parents who were abusive, who didn't feed them, in a few cases they didn't even allow them in their house -- they wanted the welfare check that being able to claim a kid allowed them, but the kid? Get out.
All he ever asked from any of them was that they treat him with some respect when they talked to him. Mostly he just ignored them. However, if one of them was in trouble or needed help, he was there for that as well.
Describing him so briefly doesn't really do him justice and it probably comes across all wrong to some who don't understand how things really are for kids from broken families. He was a safety net and the closest thing to a father that some of these kids had ever had. He was always there for them, until he died, always willing to understand, always encouraging them to do better and yet accepting them for who they were despite all their flaws. Like I said, he was my best friend, and the best man I have ever known. At his funeral a good half dozen of these kids came back, as young adults then, to pay their final respects.
Anyway, sorry, that was a bit off topic.
The point is that there are good people in this world. Sometimes you cannot judge them by their rough exterior or the mistakes they have made in their past. And sometimes, maybe as often as not, it is not the official duties of a "parent" -- the nice home, the designer clothes, the hovering concern over trivialities -- that make a difference in a child's life.
If what we have heard reported in this case is accurate, and we have no reason (no evidence) at this point to doubt it, this guy was a good guy. The family (mom and others), so far, have gone out of their way to vouch for him. And if the other two girls were not repeating the story that their older sister walked out the door on her own (and repeating it to both their own parents and the police) then I suspect we would have heard something more about it by now.
Which is a long way of saying that I am keeping an open mind at this point.
