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Occasionally my husband sends me links to articles that he thinks I might want to blog about. Frankly I wish he had never sent me this one because it is one of the more disturbing stories I have read, but it is worthy of a blog.
This story comes out of Washington, D.C.
This mother killed her four children because she thought they were possessed. The four girls were between the ages of five and seventeen. The methods with which she killed her girls varied.
In case that is not bad enough, the girls’ bodies we were not discovered for about two weeks. U.S. Marshalls arrived to evict the mother from the home and that is when they discovered the bodies of the girls.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. These girls had been living in a home with no electricity for several months, and their mother starved them for several days before she killed them. That means that this woman had some serious issues for several months.
Ms. Jacks tried to convince investigators that the children died in their sleep. Never mind the fact that there was no way an investigation would conclude that these were accidental deaths.
Why wasn’t any of this reported you ask?
In March Ms. Jacks unexpectedly removed her children from the public school they had been attending. She was no longer sending the children to school so the school paid a visit to her. When they arrived, Ms. Jacks stated that she wanted to remove the children from school.
That is not to say that these children and this family went un-noticed. There were complaints filed with social services. However, when investigators went to the house they were unable to meet with anyone, so they assumed the family had moved.
Does anyone else see a problem with this?
Wouldn’t a quick check of school enrollment records, DMV records, employment records or utility records have revealed if they had moved? And simply because you couldn’t meet a person face to face means that they moved?
This woman obviously had mental health issues. She thought her children were possessed and killed them. She thought she could pass off brutal murders as accidental deaths or natural deaths. These are not the actions of a mentally healthy woman. The fact that someone reported this family to social services tells me that there was much more going on.
This article from the Associated Press indicates that six social workers are being fired over this “incident” and more may be fired. There are tapes of the calls social services received from the school social worker when she visited the home. She told the agency that she felt the mother had mental illness and that she felt the mother was holding the children hostage.
This is a high profile case, so I am sure that more will be printed about this. The government won’t have much choice but to follow through. As tragic as these deaths are, hopefully this will create some changes in the policy and procedure within the department.
At least the social worker at the school did try to contact ACS (or whatever they’re called in that state) & finally the police, , even though she was just given the run around each time.
I work in a school & I think (hope?) that most school personnel really do take mandatory reporting seriously but if we can’t get anyone to pay attention to our reports it’s very frustrating. We’re responsible for reporting stuff but have absolutely no authority to get things done.
It’s such a sad story — you’d think this woman’s family would also have noticed something, wouldn’t you? For all we know, of course, they tried to get help & got the runaround too.