She willingly left a medically fragile, disabled child with a man she knew was whipping this vulnerable four year old, who she had concerns was bathing her and had taken the child out of preschool on several occasions to be with him by herself at home.
This is a child who is in the system due to MULTIPLE "accidents", one of which at least caused a catastrophic brain injury, which doctors stated could not because by a fall from a chair, and which caused Maleah to be in the system, the "parents" to temporarily lose custody and mom to be found to have neglected to properly supervise her child.
But she went out of town and left Maleah with this man regardless of all that.
Then, after returning home and not being able to locate her children, she fails to call 911 and fails to even report them missing at all until possibly, on Sunday. Which is my only neglectful but shows consciousness of guilt, IMO.
That's pretty clear criminal negligence IMO:
(d) A person acts with criminal negligence, or is criminally negligent, with respect to circumstances surrounding his conduct or the result of his conduct when he ought to be aware of a substantial and unjustifiable risk that the circumstances exist or the result will occur. The risk must be of such a nature and degree that the failure to perceive it constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of care that an ordinary person would exercise under all the circumstances as viewed from the actor's standpoint.
And she would be the actor here in a criminally negligent homicide case. He would be the actor of a different homicide charge, like murder.
Let me put it this way: If a mother allows a man she knows is on the Megan's Law website, and is prohibited from being around children, to care for her two year old for a week, and the two year old ends up with injuries sustained from a brutal rape, is the mother free from legal culpability just because she herself didn't rape the child?
How about if a father leaves his three year old kid alone at a park and the child is kodnappped and murdered. Does dad escape responsibility just because he didn't kidnap and kill his child?
However, knowing many people in the public have the same issue with the concept as you do, it is rare that such a charge is levied at mother's who leave their kids with an abuser who then kills the child, and something like reckless endangerment or some other charge associated with failure to protect is levied instead.