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Mom Brands Daughter a Wimp
Filed under: Opinions
These days, given that I'm married and have three kids, I try to keep my violent nature suppressed. Most of the time, I succeed pretty well, but every once in a while I come across a story that makes me want to dig out the electric carving knife and start slicing off body parts. This, sadly, is one such story.Tammy Smith, a forty-three-year-old mother from West Virginia, got angry at her six-year-old daughter when the girl tripped and fell. Instead of comforting the girl and checking for injuries, Smith decided to use her cigarette to burn the word "Wimp" into her daughter's neck. According to Detective Shawn Allman, "The 'i' was even dotted."
Why she would get upset at her daughter for falling down I can't even imagine. Perhaps the girl, having skinned her knee or banged her arm, began to cry. Maybe she was just scared. Whatever the case, and even if her reaction was more than the injury warranted, there is simply no excuse for hurting the girl further, let alone scarring her for life.
Luckily, a teacher saw the scar and got in touch with social services. The police were called in and the girl was taken into protective custody; she will be placed in foster care. Her mother, meanwhile, has been arrested and faces ten felony charges, including felony child abuse and malicious assault. If convicted, she could be sentenced to a maximum of only seventy-five years in prison.
If you ask me, she would be getting off very lightly with such a sentence. If I were tasked with meting out her punishment, seventy-five years in prison would seem like winning the lottery.
| With enough counseling and education, she could get her daughter back | |
|---|---|
| Yes, under supervision, but she should never be able to regain custody | |
| No, she should be locked up for life and never see anyone, let alone her daughter | |
| The girl shouldn't even have to know where the body is buried. |











ReaderComments (Page 4 of 7)
11-26-2008 @ 11:11PM
marian said...may God have mercy on us. What ever could of made her think this was good for her child is beyond me.Pray God grants this child a better future than her past.
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11-27-2008 @ 12:08AM
jharris352 said...I know you are probably a really good person who can't fathom that a Mom would do something to her six year old without thinking it was good for her, but there is no doubt this Mom was not doing what she thought was best for her daughter.
This is an example of unmitigated evil and cruelty by a mom to her Child. I can only sleep because I believe in a Just God who must burn even hotter than I do when I hear of cruelty like this.
She will face a righteously angry God one day, and that makes me not want seek vengeance myself.
11-26-2008 @ 11:20PM
madison said...Thats the stupoidest thing i've heard the woman is 43 yeas old and shes sentenced to 75 years of prision and the writer thinks shes getting it easy. Hello she would be 118 years old when she got out. She would probably be dead by then. The writer should have thought about that.
I feel so bad for the kid but at least the moms gonna be in prision
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11-26-2008 @ 11:30PM
Paula Mayr said...My mother was a sociopath. I was beaten several times a week from the time I was tiny till I was teenage. During the summers she threw me out of the house at 8 a.m. and told me not to come back until 6. I wandered the streets and the woods when I was between 6 and 12. I was not permitted to have any friends. If she heard I went to anyone, she beat me. At thirteen she hired me out to clean houses.
When I was about 5 and a half, she went a little too far, beating me to the floor with a wooden spoon and then kicking me with her feet. In her heavy German accent she would scream at me to stop crying. She finally grabbed me by the hair dragging me along the floor into the bathroom and slammed my head against the bathtub. I passed out. She couldn't revive me so I woke to find the doctor sitting on my bed. He shut the bedroom door and I told him that my mother beat me all the time. He opened the door and shouted at my mother to stop beating me. She told all the neighbors I had a nervous breakdown.
I went to parochial school and told the nuns about it. I told them also that she locked me into the cold fruit cellar. Once she locked me into the coal cellar where it was pitch black--I was only four. To this day I am claustrophobic. The nuns only smiled and said: "She's your mother!" as if that meant she was a saint and her actions shouldn't be questioned.
I could go on and on. If someone wrote a book about me, it would become an instant best seller.
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11-26-2008 @ 11:39PM
vanessa said...What a Piece OF Sh*t! She should sit in jail the rest of her life! If she did that to the little girl God only knows what else she did n got away with. People REALLY make me sick! There's so many people out their that cant have kids, and this is what people do when the can have kids? I couldn't even imagine doing something like that to my son.
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11-26-2008 @ 11:30PM
Monica M said...I think the daughter should be able to inscript on the mothers neck what she thinks about what her mother did to her. But thats not teaching the child what life is about. This child needs someone to love her and hold her and let her know she is not a wimp she is a winner and God don't make wimps. That mother is to be locked up and sterelized Never to even see her daughter again. She is just plain sick.
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11-26-2008 @ 11:39PM
Paula Mayr said...Please delete my last name so you won't use it again. I don't want anyone to know it.
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11-26-2008 @ 11:46PM
Pat O said...Despicable behavior indeed. One thing the internet proves is that there are plenty of people out there to judge others. I don't condone violence, but I do believe current society coddles children to too great an extent. Doesn't really matter much anyhow; the turds we are raising these days will have the World destroyed by the end of the next century.
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11-26-2008 @ 11:52PM
Kevin said...To greatgoog3 it is a complete waste of life, like you, that is everything wrong with this country. You would defend a filthy animal who brought harm to an innocent child by declaring that substance abuse is a disease. The only disease is people like you who are allowed to leach off of the system, live a self absorbed existence of excess and in the end, the hard working people of this country have to pay to "rehabilitate" scum like you and this child's horror show of a mother.
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11-27-2008 @ 12:19AM
SBC said...They should burn the words "bad mom" on her neck before locking her up.
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11-27-2008 @ 12:22AM
Laure said...Reminds of another horror story: Silvia Likens.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/notorious_murders/young/likens/1.html
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11-28-2008 @ 1:20AM
Rachel said...Wow...that was worse than the book "A boy called it". How could so many people go along with this crime?
11-27-2008 @ 1:04AM
JULES said...I KNOW I MIGHT OFFEND SOME PEOPLE WHEN I MENTION THE WORD GOD, BUT I AM ANYWAY, THAT IS MY RIGHT. I FEEL SO MUCH SYMPATHY & SADNESS FOR THIS LITTLE CHILD, BUT I KNOW GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF HER. AND FOR THIS SICK, EVIL WOMAN, SHE WILL BE JUDGED IN THE END, ALTHOUGH I WOULD LOVE TO HAVE THAT HONOR AND I'M SURE I'M NOT ALONE, I CAN ONLY PRAY FOR HER AND ASK GOD TO PUNISH ACCORDINGLY. AND FOR THIS LITTLE DEFENSLESS CHILD, I WILL NEVER CEASE TO PRAY AND THINK OF HER EVERY SECOND.... WHAT GOES AROUND, ALWAYS COMES AROUND... I HAVE THREE WONDERFUL CHILDREN OF MY OWN AND IF THEY WERE EVER HURT, I WOULD GET REVENGE AND I WOULD WHOOP BUTT AND ASK QUESTIONS LATER. I KNOW THAT'S NOT THE ANSWER, BUT I AM A MOTHER, I LOVE MY CHILDREN, WHEN THEY HURT, I HURT. CHILDREN ARE A GIFT, NOT A PRIVILEDGE. GOD BLESS YOU CHILD...
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11-27-2008 @ 12:32AM
Courtney said...Umm i think 75 years is a little harsh isn't it?
I think that 5 to 10 years is much more appropriate.
I am sixteen years old and don't have any kids, but I have 5 younger siblings.
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11-27-2008 @ 12:39AM
observer said...Mom was probably on drugs which means a tatoo was the least of possibilities and the little girl probably got out lucky
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11-27-2008 @ 12:34AM
Joclyn said...To Proud Mommy-
Excuse me! I live in a very small town in West Virginia, I am married and have 3 beautiful children. I also have a college education and owned my first home when I was 21. I love my children and drove 40 minutes each way to put them through private preschool. I give them every opportunity I can, and know that my husband and I are good parents. There are uneducated, ignorant people, or "hicks" everywhere. Her location is irrelevant. She is a sick witch that should be punished and that is that. Don't put down West Virginia for her actions! The world is way worse in more populated areas! Stereotypes like this are exactly why there is so much tension in our world.
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11-27-2008 @ 12:34AM
mjtlewellen said...Consider the way inmates treat those who are imprisoned for child abuse and molestation. Fellow convicts look on these crimes as the worst. It is going to be a very, very long 75 years.
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11-27-2008 @ 12:36AM
Dylan and Taran said...From what I understand about prisons, inmates accept murderers, arsonists, burglars, terrorists, but the one crime they punish within their own walls is anything to do with the injuring of a child--this goes for the men as well as the women. It seems a criminal has stooped as low as possible when a crime of any type has been committed against a child.
When I read this--and I truly get angry with myself for stereotyping geographical/regional areas, the first area that came to mind was "West Virginia". Now, I just wonder "where" in West Virginia.
I have never been one to particularly believe in "an eye for an eye' punishment until it comes to children and animals, both of whom are innocent, and rely upon us for the health, welfare, and wellbeing.
There are many words I can think of that could be burned into that woman......"ignorant white trash" being the first. People like her do not deserve to have children. And may Hippocrates forgive me for Blaspheming my Hippocratic Oath, but it seems like women with a mentality such as this has no difficulty having children, while a woman who would love and cherish that child spends 50% of her life trying to conceive or never does and must adopt.
Articles such as this always leave me wondering where the justice is in the world.
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11-27-2008 @ 2:40AM
Bek said...I think this woman should have "child abuser" burned into her neck and sent to prison. Nothing like a little "peer pressure" to let her know what a horrible piece of crap she is.
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11-27-2008 @ 12:37AM
Carrie said...You are a complete a**hole. Where is the father? If the mother is such a screw-up, why did the father not stand up and take responsibility? Is it because the mother is always at fault...because you think you can just have sex with whom ever and not have any consequences? You are a pig, and would be willing to bet that you have at least one "bastard" child in the world somewhere. What goes around, come around.........LOSER.
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