The Possible Abuse of Caylee REVISIT

[metalcrystal]

That is not true. In the first batch of discovery documents there was an interview with a friend of Tony the boyfriends- I believe it was a girlfriend of one of his roomates who said that Casey was not very attentive to Caylee.


Regarding the parties- I also remember hearing that Caylee was at the "no clothes" party. That's a far cry from a normal adult party and she had no business being there or at any similar parties.

Regarding sleeping in bed w/ mom and man du jor- no way. Mom was teaching her that sharing beds with men was no big deal and was therefore encouraging promiscuity. She should have been dating these men for 3-6 months before they were introduced to Caylee.

And finally, regarding abuse. Someone else mentioned this here last week and was attacked relentlessly but I'm going to say it as well. In the few videos we've seen of Caylee, I sensed some emotions that did not seem to show her to be a happy child. Some anger, some fear, some sadness and even resignation.

I know anger and defiance is fairly typical in a two and three year old. That I could excuse if I didn't see the fear and resignation in her eyes when she was cuddling up with her great granddad.

Caylee was not a typical toddler. And it is not speaking ill of her to point out that she probably had more challenges than the typical child her age (instability, a self centered mother, exposure to inappropriate events, no daddy in her life) and therefore acted out and was not as happy as she should have been.

great post Pirate

 

[pirate]

I only post my opinions. I appreciate the warning. I felt uncomfortable with her being accused of "not being a good nurse."

Very nice of you to speak up about CA's professional reputation in spite of how you feel about the Casey/Caylee situation. You seem like a very fair person.

 

[norr]

I personally think its a stretch to call taking a kid to parties where there is alcohol and drugs "abuse" ... probably not the greatest idea but not abuse. Having her sleep in the same bed as a boyfriend - really bad idea on many levels. Neglectful. Dumb. And certainly Casey DID abuse Caylee in some way in June when she killed her - but I just cant call taking her to parties abuse.

I can call it abuse. What else?

 

[technicalconfusion]

I personally think its a stretch to call taking a kid to parties where there is alcohol and drugs "abuse" ... probably not the greatest idea but not abuse. Having her sleep in the same bed as a boyfriend - really bad idea on many levels. Neglectful. Dumb. And certainly Casey DID abuse Caylee in some way in June when she killed her - but I just cant call taking her to parties abuse.

Consider this.

You are at a theoretical party in Florida, with your theoretical kids. Theoretically, you (and I don't mean you, anyone who is reading) are hanging with your buds and flavor of the day.

Everybody is drinking and drugging and having a good old time. There's a raid.

Everyone gets arrested. You get charged with some kind of crime (even if you haven't been doing the drugs.) because you are there. So does everyone else, the charge has to do with drugs. Everyone gets carted off to jail. Your kids are taken into the custody of the state - because you were innocently at a party with drugs. Even if you weren't doing the drugs, you are now in a world of sheisse, with a good possibility of losing your kids over it.

Abuse? Maybe yes maybe no. I would say the state would think it's something.

 

[curiositycat]

Consider this.

You are at a theoretical party in Florida, with your theoretical kids. Theoretically, you (and I don't mean you, anyone who is reading) are hanging with your buds and flavor of the day.

Everybody is drinking and drugging and having a good old time. There's a raid.

Everyone gets arrested. You get charged with some kind of crime (even if you haven't been doing the drugs.) because you are there. So does everyone else, the charge has to do with drugs. Everyone gets carted off to jail. Your kids are taken into the custody of the state - because you were innocently at a party with drugs. Even if you weren't doing the drugs, you are now in a world of sheisse, with a good possibility of losing your kids over it.

Abuse? Maybe yes maybe no. I would say the state would think it's something.

I volunteer as a victim's advocate these days. Once you see the fear and horror in a child whose parent is being arrested you NEVER get that picture out of your mind.

Yeah...it's abuse in my book.

 

[Mermaid]

Very nice of you to speak up about CA's professional reputation in spite of how you feel about the Casey/Caylee situation. You seem like a very fair person.

That's very sweet of you to say, thank you, Pirate.

 

[Laece]

That is odd and it also makes me feel uncomfortable. I agree, Caylee was most like mimicking (sp?) Mommy.

i really hope this isn't misconstrued as my thinking it's okay for children to run around acting like little hussies, cause frankly, i think that's awful and it's not what i mean at all.

but for a kid to be called a little flirt is usually nothing. some kids are shy around certain adults, might hide their eyes a little and peek out, and a parent will say 'are you flirting' in a joking way. maybe caylee was a little bit of a show-off at times because she wanted attention she wasn't getting. or maybe she was just that way...or maybe she could tell if someone was important to casey and she wanted to be important to that person too.

some of the younger siblings of my students are that way with me, because they sort of know me but not well, so they might be shy and then try to get my attention. a parent will say aww, he's flirting, what a flirt!

i doubt they mean their kid is turning into a rampantly oversexual and inappropriate person, or mimicking their -ish parents behaviour. (trust me, if you saw some of these parents...)

i remember being little and having little 'crush' type things on people. it was about attention, and my mom is the farthest thing from the head-hussy teaching me her wiley ways.

not saying it's not possible, just saying...some kids are like that.

 

[impatientredhead]

Alcohol is one thing..drugs are illegal. If there is a bust in a house where there are children the children will be taken away from parent at least on a temp basis. So yeah, taking a child to a party like that is abuse. JMO. Caylee was the only child in a group of partying adults. The testimony of Amy proved that she didn't always watch Caylee, she would be "somewhere else" while Caylee was asleep. Sometime, she reported, Caylee would wake up. Not a good thing. When a child is taken into a sexually charged situation, such as the "clothes optional party", you may have some sickos in the crowd. There is just no way a child should be in that environment. NONE.

JMO

Having lived the life of a child that was around true adult parties, not sex parties, but drinking and drugs I can tell you it is abusive. Parents are not attentive when they are impaired, and when surrounded by other impaired adults, some known better than others, that have similar boundaries about what is appropriate around and with a child.... well lets just say it is putting your child in harms way.

The type of people that do drugs around toddlers lack judgement.
The type of man that lets a mom and her toddler share his bed within weeks of meeting her lacks judgement. Beyond being creepy, it also puts that man in a very vulnerable position to allegations being made against him. MOO

 

[karen in New York]

I agree, and appreciate your opinion. There is always more sides to a story than what is put out there on TV.

My family had a situation with some similarities to the Anthony's - a young irresponsible party girl who became pregnant without a marriage plan, then postpartum turned into full-fledged bi-polar disorder and req'd hospitalization. The Party girl was always self-absorbed and as a mother she had a lot to learn. Married the babies dad. After a year or so, the family tried to back-off so that mom & dad could become real parents and become more responsible over time. These parents are now much better - but still have a ways to go. Should never have been parents... but all the grandparents stepped in - but it is a fine line with doing too much and perhaps not enough. Promoting or enabling irresponsible behavior is something a grandparent worries about. It is not easy. I think that people are way too harsh on the Anthony's now - we do not know all the issues that they tried to deal with and why they did or didn't do certain things. We will know more as time goes on. But we should all try to learn something from this.
Grandparents out there - I know you/we all deal with trying to help support our children to grow into responsible parents and adults - but the road isn't always an easy one or the route isn't always clear.
Nurses follow written protocols. There are none for parenting and parenting a daughter like Casey, no less.
Sorry for the rant

 

[not_my_kids]

Having lived the life of a child that was around true adult parties, not sex parties, but drinking and drugs I can tell you it is abusive. Parents are not attentive when they are impaired, and when surrounded by other impaired adults, some known better than others, that have similar boundaries about what is appropriate around and with a child.... well lets just say it is putting your child in harms way.

The type of people that do drugs around toddlers lack judgement.
The type of man that lets a mom and her toddler share his bed within weeks of meeting her lacks judgement. Beyond being creepy, it also puts that man in a very vulnerable position to allegations being made against him. MOO

I'm not sure I agree with the irst pat of your post, but I definitely agree with the last two statements.
I can't see ever doing or allowing a friend to do drugs around my kids. ANd that is not to say that I have never done drugs but I stopped when I realized I was pregnant and cut that group of friends out of my life.
And I really couldn't agree more about RM even allowing Caylee to be in the bed. First of all, just about any man these days knows how careful they have to be, especially when it comes to women and children. For RM to allow that to happen, says that either he was very naive or he jsut didn't care about what might happen. And yes, it is way creepy.

 

[DJ3569]

WOW! It's nice to know there are so many perfect people on this site!!! God forbid that the Anthonys loved their daughter so much that they just can not believe that she would or could murder her baby in cold blood. They may be blinded when it comes to their child but that doesn't make them evil every picture that I've seen of Caylee she was smiling and happy and she did not look like she was abused or unhappy! This whole situation is miserable for all family members involved try and have some compassion and not be so judgmental.

 

[Secretsolver]

Children's Services would have been very interested in KC's lifestyle had they been notified. There was no income besides stealing,no home, men in and out of the bed with the child in it.....mothers have had children taken away from them fo thse things. This was an emergency situation and part of loving your child or grandchild is to do what has to be done however unpleasant that may be. There were many many signs that KC was unstable before he daughter died.

The sad thing is that Children and Family Services in Florida is over run with not enough agents and too many cases to look into. IF Child Services were to have shown up at the A's house, what would they have seen?

A neatly cleaned house with a set of Grandparents, food in the fridge, a sand box and playhouse in the yard, a couple of doggies and a bedroom all decked out for a little princess.
Grandma Cindy could then have whipped out the dozens of darling videos she had of Caylee happily singing and Childrens Services would have no doubt dismissed any so called problems or accusations they had.

 

[Salome]

That is not true. In the first batch of discovery documents there was an interview with a friend of Tony the boyfriends- I believe it was a girlfriend of one of his roomates who said that Casey was not very attentive to Caylee.

Regarding the parties- I also remember hearing that Caylee was at the "no clothes" party. That's a far cry from a normal adult party and she had no business being there or at any similar parties.

I don't think this is accurate information. Looking back over as many sources as I could in a quick search about the no clothes party, there are no reports about Caylee being there from those who talked about it with LE (or here on the site).

Yes, I don't doubt that Casey wasn't very attentive to Caylee when Tone was around--she seemed to be pretty focused on him (for example, that first jail call she wants nothing more than to get his phone #, and pressed her brother and the friend to get the # even when they were asking serious questions or expressing serious worry). I just don't know that this constitutes abuse. There are many moms and dads who will be inattentive to their kid for an hour while a favorite tv program is on (i.e., not playing, not engaging, just responding enough to get the kid on to something else so you can turn your attention away again), but that doesn't make them abusive or neglectful overall, imo.

I don't think Casey was a great mom, or even a good mom -- I just don't know; but most reports indicate she was a good enough mom, at least in front of others. Maybe there are things that happened that we don't know about and never will. CA seems to have done a whole lot of the mothering as well, and she seems to have been very devoted to Caylee. But just b/c Casey wasn't a good mom doesn't mean she was abusive. There's a line between a bad parent or a lacking parent and an abusive or neglectful parent.

 

[AlwaysShocked]

Another reported incident that made me cringe early on was when a male friend/roomate of boyfriend Tony described being in the living room of Tony's apartment playing with Caylee while mom Casey and boyfriend Tony were "in the bedroom". This was an interview by Greta Van Sustren if I remember correctly. And you definitely got the idea from the interview that he wasn't meaning that they had just wandered into the bedroom to have a little chat.

 

[CourtsInSession]

Children's Services would have been very interested in KC's lifestyle had they been notified. There was no income besides stealing,no home, men in and out of the bed with the child in it.....mothers have had children taken away from them fo thse things. This was an emergency situation and part of loving your child or grandchild is to do what has to be done however unpleasant that may be. There were many many signs that KC was unstable before he daughter died.

I don't understand why some people at these parties didn't call children's services on Caysee. Some stated they didn't like the idea, or felt uncomfortable at Caylee being there with drinking, etc. going on. There were a few in that crowd that had no time whatsoever for Casey, like J.B.C. Why didn't one of them call when they felt it wasn't right.

As far as Cindy goes, I don't understand why she didn't make it a point to pick up Caylee at the 'nannies' when Casey had to supposedly work late. GA would be at work, or recuperating from something or other, and she could have picked up Caylee on her way home from work. I can't see a little one at a babysitters any longer than necessary, let alone from a.m. until p.m. the next night. Children need their family and to spend time with them, not living half the time at a babysitters house.

 

[CourtsInSession]

Could you please post a link to even one of those cases where a mother lost her parental rights for sleeping around? Who, besides Casey, even knew how many men she slept with? She certainly didn't go home to Cindy and brag about it. Cindy, as naive as it is, thought she was at work. Remember, Cindy couldn't believe that Casey was pregnant.

Apparently some of us had mothers with ESP who knew every single thing we did when we were out of the house, even as adults. I'm sure glad I'm not one of those kids.

Cindy and George did everything they possibly could for Caylee. It's horribly unfair to blame them for Casey's crimes.

With all due respect CW, who exactly raised Casey to be the person she became?????

 

[cfromcanada]

With all due respect CW, who exactly raised Casey to be the person she became?????

With all due respect, I don't believe that all the blame can be placed on parents once a child is grown. I come from a large family, all raised the same way, the same levels of accountability and expectations of honor and integrity. One of my siblings is a sociopath and NOTHING WORKED..I watched my parents struggle with the lies, the passive resistance, etc. She has never killed anyone but if she ever did, it sure wouldn't be my parent's fault. Lord knows they tried!!!

 

[Pink Panther]

With all due respect, I don't believe that all the blame can be placed on parents once a child is grown. I come from a large family, all raised the same way, the same levels of accountability and expectations of honor and integrity. One of my siblings is a sociopath and NOTHING WORKED..I watched my parents struggle with the lies, the passive resistance, etc. She has never killed anyone but if she ever did, it sure wouldn't be my parent's fault. Lord knows they tried!!!

Generally, I agree. I don't think it's fair or feasible to blame (or credit) parents for everything their children do or become HOWEVER, there is VERY OBVIOUSLY something not quite right here with this family. Their statements and behaviors are telling a very different story than that which one encounters in "normal" family's with a "bad seed" child.

MOO

 

[cfromcanada]

Generally, I agree. I don't think it's fair or feasible to blame (or credit) parents for everything their children do or become HOWEVER, there is VERY OBVIOUSLY something not quite right here with this family. Their statements and behaviors are telling a very different story than that which one encounters in "normal" family's with a "bad seed" child.

MOO

I do have to give you that! Their behavior after the fact has been nothing short of stunning, but I cannot lay the blame of the murder at their grandchild at their feet as I still believe they truly never thought their daughter was capable of that heinous of a crime.

 

[Pink Panther]

I do have to give you that! Their behavior after the fact has been nothing short of stunning, but I cannot lay the blame of the murder at their grandchild at their feet as I still believe they truly never thought their daughter was capable of that heinous of a crime.

I agree, but I cannot understand or forgive what they have doing "after the fact"! Again, repeating my earlier post, something is not quite right IMO.

(From one Canuck to another - Happy New Year eh!)