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Am I reading this correctly that the address where they found the child was where her mother’s boyfriend was living? > "So we narrowed it down to [this] one ad
by Aurornis 9mo ago
Am I reading this correctly that the address where they found the child was where her mother’s boyfriend was living?
> "So we narrowed it down to [this] one address… and started the process of confirming who was living there through state records, driver's licence… information on schools," says Squire.
> The team realised that in the household with Lucy was her mother's boyfriend - a convicted sex offender.
There’s a lot of focus on Facebook in the comments here, but unless I’m missing something the strangest part about this story was that the child’s mother was dating a convicted sex offender and they had to go through all of this process to arrive at this? It’s impressive detective work with the brick expert identifying bricks and the sofa sellers gathering their customer list, but how did this connection not register earlier?
EDIT: As others have pointed out, the wording is confusing. They made these connections to the identity only after identifying the house
- Macha 9mo agoI think the order went finding the house first and only then were they able to identify the victim (and consequently the offender)
- Scipio_Afri 9mo agoExactly, it sounds like they didn't know who the girl was from photos alone; "Lucy" was just a name they gave the victim.
- Aurornis 9mo agoThat would make sense. Thank you.
- slow_typist 9mo agoYou could still run the sofa customers list against a list of known offenders but is there a federal list? Maybe the number of states where the sofa was sold was to large and getting the full list not feasible?
- rectang 9mo agoThere's also a lot of "WHY AREN'T YOU FOCUSING ON THE MOTHER?" whataboutism in the comments, which I find appalling. The article was about something else, and who knows what her circumstances were.
- Aurornis 9mo agoMost crimes like this are, sadly, committed by someone who has some connection to the family. It’s standard to investigate connections first. That’s not “appalling” to suggest, it’s just a sad reality of these crimes. They should be focusing on everyone connected to the family if known. It would be negligent not to. The confusion came from the way the article was written. They didn’t know the identity until afterward.
- tomnipotent 9mo agoSomething like 60-70% of violent crime involves victims and offenders that know each other, and with murder and sexual assault it's 70-80%.
- LorenPechtel 9mo agoWhich isn't really relevant as most violent crime is criminal on criminal. Know each other doesn't mean they're friends. Many times it's rivals.
- directevolve 9mo agoI just want to point out that there’s a huge difference between thoroughly investigating the family after abuse of this magnitude has been proven, and making parents legally culpable for any harm that comes to their children in general. We can react to the fact that mothers can do more to protect their children from abuse in many ways. We can give them better access to information and support in getting away from abusers. We can create better links between police and communities they serve. We can create more pathways for children to be exposed to healthy adult behavior and connections with healthy adults, even when the family is dysfunctional. But when we find evidence that existing supports have failed, deeply investigating why is critical.
- phire 9mo agoSex offender registries are just registries. They only work if someone decides to actually do a query. It might prevent them from getting a childcare job, but it doesn't really prevent them from accessing children at all. The registers are also massively bloated, some people get put on them for nothing more than public urination. The only sex offenders who actually get regular checks that might identify this type of thing, are those on parole, or similar court ordered programs.
- Aurornis 9mo agoThe salient point was that the person was in a relationship to the child’s mother.
- phire 9mo agoThey didn't know who the child was, yet alone the mother. All they had were photos of an unnamed girl being abused.
- koolba 9mo agoI didn’t understand that part. The child has a mother, why wasn’t she reported missing?
- rationalist 9mo agoA child does not need to be missing to be abused. Most abuse happens by people the child knows.
- butlike 9mo agoThere's also a long dark road down "just because they birthed you doesn't mean they want to parent you."
- Loudergood 9mo agoIndeed, he may not have even been on the lease or title of the residence.
- eastbound 9mo ago> the strangest part about this story was that the child’s mother was dating a convicted sex offender 70.6% of beaten children are beaten at the mother’s custody. Most often it turns out the choice of companion of the mother is inappropriate. While many see that as blaming the mother and it is a huge taboo in our society, it is such a huge humanitarian problem that it’s worth educating women better over that specific problem, and taking sanctions if necessary. 70.8% in the case of death. Source: CDC 2001-2006 if I remember. Incoming: Many ad-hominem about the source, it’s a problem that never gets addressed.
- rectang 9mo ago> While many see that as blaming the mother Yes, that's how I see it. > it is such a huge humanitarian problem that it’s worth educating women better over that specific problem, and taking sanctions if necessary. "Sanctions"? This is an article about successful digital sleuthing, but your takeaway is that we need to punish the mother?
- TurdF3rguson 9mo agoNot to mention we're talking about rape not beatings. Beatings wouldn't put DHS on the case.
- vasco 9mo agoThere's been several cases of mothers being put in jail for child negligence in such situations in my country.
- whatsupdog 9mo agoA lot of evils cannot be eradicated with just more education. Sunshine I we as a society have to put our foot down.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- journal 9mo agoabsolute ~cinema~ surveillance
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- nneonneo 9mo ago> an abused girl his team had named Lucy > It was impossible to work out who, or where, Lucy was. Lucy is a pseudonym. They were trying to get Facebook to tell them who the girl was through facial recognition. There’s no reason to expect a priori that the offender would be in any registry.
- nprateem 9mo agoThey couldn't ID the child initially.
- znnajdla 9mo agoNot surprising to me at all. I’m a straight man and I’ve always dated single mothers, and it always shocked me how bad their ex partners were. Woman are drawn to toxic abusers like men are drawn to OnlyFans models and the real victims are the children. And women can be incredibly blind to what is going on with their child when they’re in a codependent relationship with the abuser.
- altmanaltman 9mo agoYou've always dated single mothers?
- tempaccount5050 9mo agoAfter your late 20s, that's like 90% of your pool.
- 4gotunameagain 9mo agoWhere, in Utah ?
- Tzela 9mo ago"women are drawn to toxic abusers" is very, very wrong. It indicates a wish/desire/need to be abused. No, they are not drawn to that. Many abusers know how to look nice and perfect and are great at manipulation. Also, there may just be a lot of bad men in your social peer group. Don't make it sound like it's the womens fault.
- 4gotunameagain 9mo agoIt's not very wrong unfortunately. Do you remember back in school that the nice, timid guys were friendzoned but the assholes always had girls after them ? There must be some evolutionary justification, but we have to live with that unfortunate reality..
- 9mo ago
- globular-toast 9mo agoSorry, but the wording isn't confusing, I think you just didn't read it properly. All they knew was a girl, somewhere, was being abused. They didn't know who her mother was or, obviously, who was taking the pictures.
- Pay08 9mo agoThere are a lot of women out there drawn to criminals of every kind. The primary demographic of true crime shows are women for a reason, not to mention the letters murderers and such receive. I would be curious to know why this is, and if it happens in other cultures too.
- AlecSchueler 9mo agoIf there were as many women in prison as men you can be sure there would be as many or more men interested in them.
- Pay08 9mo agoCan I be sure? How? There are plenty of women in prison as-is, although high profile cases are rarer.
- AlecSchueler 9mo agoRelatively speaking there aren't plenty of women in prison for violent crimes. It's about a 9:1 ratio. Men obsessively sexualise everything in our patriarchal society.
- Pay08 9mo agoSure... There are so many things wrong with this that I don't know where to begin.
- AlecSchueler 9mo agoWell, that's how I felt about your initial comment so we're even.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- bmn__ 9mo agoYou've been downvoted into grey-blivion because that claim is wrong. It is an example of the underlying supposition that the behaviour of men and women is identical. This runs counter to the findings of psychology and sociology.
- sethev 9mo agoThe registry did come up, as soon as they had enough information for it to be useful. They were looking for a specific child, starting just from the images that her abuser was sharing on the internet (in which he intentionally tried to hide identifying details). The registry is just a big list of names and addresses.
- chaostheory 9mo agoThere’s a lot of focus on Facebook in the article because they want public support to end privacy
- 20after4 9mo agoYeah this whole story reads like propaganda to me.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- butlike 9mo agoI mean, from the sound of it you start out with literally a picture, so hindsight is obvious, but they didn't know who was living in that house until really close to the end.