Johnathan James died of dehydration in his own Texas home. He was only 10.
No, Texas has not been afflicted with severe drought, nor the boy was trapped home alone in a locked room in a remote location. He was denied water for five days by his own parents.
Michael Ray James and Tina Alberson were upset that their young son could not stop wetting his bed. The punishment they meted to the child was banning water for him. Jonathan's twin brother, Joseph James, told The Dallas Morning News that his parents forced Jonathan in a room without air conditioning and asked him to stand by the window. Last month, summer temperatures in Dallas hit 100 or more every day but one. Johnathan collapsed on the 5th night, hit his head on the floor, and died.
Five days in that sweltering heat without any water? How can any parent be so cruel to his/her own child? How can they sleep themselves in cool rooms, when their own flesh is going through such agony? Do Michael and Tina have any remorse now? Or, do they think Johnathan deserved this, for he was a big boy and he could not control his bladder? My question is—why do these people become parents?
Johnathan is only one among many children that die every year because of parental rage. There is no dearth of stories where young children are so severely tortured that they succumb to their wounds.
I ask the authorities, can we extend the harshest mandatory punishment in child abuse cases, so that there would be not one more child who would meet Jonathan's fate? Only then could we say, Jonathan's life did not go in vain!
First published on Technorati.
