One parent get it right!

After readings yesterdays story, about the parents that denied a child water for 5 days, until the child eventually died of dehydration related complications, I needed something a little less horrible.  This is story is just that...a little less horrible.  It still involves bad things happening to children, but at least in this case, one of the adults involved did the right thing.

Kingston man charged with assaulting girlfriend's two toddlers

First, let's lay the cast of characters out on the table.  First, we have our unidentified mother of 2 children, ages 1 and 3.  Then we have our unidentified father of the 1-year old, who noticed that things didn't seem right and actually DID something about it.  Finally we have Joseph Fillingham, the mothers live-in boyfriend who is the one accused of the assault/abuse in this case.

As noted in the article, the biological father of the 1-year old is the one that finally had seen enough sketchy things, and acted on it...a pattern of unusual bruising, a need for stitches, and burn's on the 3-year old's hand.  He called CPS, who told him to bring both children to the emergency room.  He did, and the system seems to have worked from there. Good for you, unidentified father of the 1-year old...I wished they gave your name so I could give you mad props.

As for the mother...I hate to draw conclusions sometimes, but let's look at things.  The story only calls the whistle-blower the father of the 1-year old, and it never calls the abuser anything but the 'boyfriend'.  We can then assume mom has two children from different men, and is now living with a third guy in a 3-4 year period.  Mom's attitude was boys will be boys, and that they were 'clumsy and wrestled each other'....but now that you mention it, 'she also noticed the injuries seemed to occur while she was at work and her boyfriend cared for them.'

Shame on you ma'am.  How long was she going to let this go before she did anything?  Even if she hadn't SEEN anything, she had to suspect...too worried about keeping her claws in another man to be a mother.  She should be lucky the article didn't use her name...

As for Joseph Fillingham, what's to say?  He is scum, and his legal punishment will not be enough. 

The only real positive is at least he didn't kill one of them yet.  The article says nothing about broken bones, or shaken baby syndrome, so I hope the children are able to make a full recovery.