I've never met Elizabeth, so I couldn't say for sure whether she knew or not, but it doesn't make sense given how much I know she loves her kids. It makes more sense to me that if she saw signs that she didn't want to believe it, rather than that she knew and approved.
Regardless, I can't see how in a just system she would get nearly twice the sentence of the man who actually did it, especially when even the prosecutor admits she didn't abuse the children and wasn't in the house when it occurred.
Look, I get it. We want to believe that if someone gets 20 years, it must be reasonable in some way. I'm probably biased, but I just can't see it, here.
If your point is that the boyfriend should have gotten a greater punishment, then I wholeheartedly agree. About the boyfriend we can at least say that he had the decency to kill himself. However, I understood you as saying that the Justice system was too harsh on Elizabeth and not that it was insufficiently harsh on her boyfriend.
I don't think I'm looking at it from the "Someone who gets 20 years must deserve it" perspective. In fact, I was predisposed to support her. You referenced her as being mistreated by the Justice System, which I already doubt, and linked to an article describing her the same way and without any detail. It's only when I read the horrific abuse that she allowed a person she knew to be a violent abuser to inflict on her fifteen month old daughter that I changed my mind. I wasn't on the jury and I don't know nearly all the details, but there doesn't seem to be anything wrong with what I do know - a mother who lets her daughter be brutally tortured should be in prison.
As an aside, I also noticed that you write as if a single instance of abuse occurred. The news articles describe it as a pattern of abuse over time. Eventually Elizabeth decided to take the baby to the hospital. It's not like she was out one day, came home and saw her injured child, took her to the hospital, and was blamed for it. Instead, she ignored bruises and wounds on her baby, after leaving that baby in the company of a man who regularly beat her. Eventually she did take the child to the hospital, which is good, but it doesn't exonerate her.
Abuse of children is a horrific crime that shuts people's ability to think. Maybe that's why you're reading a lot into the article that's not actually there.
> The news articles describe it as a pattern of abuse over time.
Neither article does this. Or, if I'm wrong, I'm sure you can post a quote directly from from the article that avers this. Or maybe it's from another article? Could you post this please?
> It's only when I read the horrific abuse that she allowed...
The only quote about that is from the prosecutor, talking to the press:
"The child was literally beaten from head to toe," said Ben Loring, assistant district attorney. "She was bruised on the top of her head to the bottom of her feet. The girl, who suffered some brain damage, had cigarette burns, a skull fracture and a broken wrist."
Truly awful. But nothing there about a repeated pattern of allowing torture. Nothing there about Elizabeth knowing about it.
Even that same guy, Loring, mentioned in both articles, thinks Elizabeth has done her time.
She alleges that the violence against her went from choking to punching to death threats, and says it continued after they were both arrested on child abuse charges.
Still, she never imagined he would lay a hand on a child. He wanted her kids to call him “dad.” During their relationship, which lasted just under a year, though, she sometimes noticed her daughter had some bruises. One time, her daughter fell off the bed.
When she asked Good about it, “He always had a story for what happened like … He was holding her and you know, she slipped and fell or that she slipped and fell or the dog knocked her down. You know, he always had something,” she said. “And honestly, I believed it because nothing in my mind at that time ever fathomed that anybody would hurt a child.”
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That pretty clearly establishes that abuse was a pattern, he was beating and choking her. That abuse of her daughter was a pattern, the daughter had multiple bruises that required multiple explanations. That also establishes that the pattern of abuse continued over time.
If the story was just that she went out, came home, discovered her beaten daughter and took her to the police - then I, and I hope everyone else, would agree that she didn't deserve to go to prison. That doesn't really seem to be what happened though. At least not as far as I can tell from reading news articles.
I'm probably being more charitable to her than a stranger would, but it sounds like a woman in denial to me, not a person who intentionally allows her boyfriend to beat her daughter. To my mind, a case could be made for a harsh sentence if a mother deliberately allows her boyfriend to torture her children, but in the case of an abused woman in denial, I would hope a justice system would not be so harsh. Remove the children to safety, probation, mandatory therapy, sure; but a 20 year sentence in that case helps no one: not her, not her children, not society.
Your interpretation is the least charitable, in my opinion, but I won't try to talk you out of it. Given what you gathered from the article, I still don't understand supporting a 20 year sentence, but I definitely understand being horrified by the descriptions of the abuse. When I first heard about this, I also thought surely there must be something wrong with Elizabeth and the situation to have earned such a sentence, but I no longer believe this.
Anyway, thanks for replying in good faith and being honest about your interpretation! Sincerely appreciated.
Regardless, I can't see how in a just system she would get nearly twice the sentence of the man who actually did it, especially when even the prosecutor admits she didn't abuse the children and wasn't in the house when it occurred.
Look, I get it. We want to believe that if someone gets 20 years, it must be reasonable in some way. I'm probably biased, but I just can't see it, here.