In Salem, Massachusetts, Kristen Anne LaBrie, 36, has been charged in a novel case. She is alleged to have withheld cancer medication from Jeremy Fraser, her 8-year-old autistic son, allowing the return of his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
LaBrie faces a charge of reckless child endangerment.
Jeremy is expected now to die before his ninth birthday.
His father, Eric Fraser, now has full custody.
We have seen a recent spate of such criminal cases of child deaths linked to their parents religious beliefs, click here. This does not appear to be such a case. Rather, the prosecutors appear to argue either negligence or intentional disregard in the boy’s treatment. It will be a challenging case for both sides since she clearly did carry out some aspects of his treatment.
For the full story, click here.
I hope you do a follow-up post on this now that she has been found guilty and sentenced to 8-10 years (prosecutor wanted maximum sentence).
She was dishonest, manipulative and apparently did her best to keep the father out of the son’s life. I do believe she neglected her child. But I’m not convinced that her motive was to kill Jeremy. That’s why I have trouble with the “attempted murder” verdict.
Even assuming that there was some kind of direct evidence, i.e., diary, notes, conversations that she wanted to “get rid of” her autistic boy, I hate the way it came about: A doctor reported her to authorities because his cancer recurred after being in remission. THIS PARTICULAR time, a parent had done something wrong, but I fear that some medical providers will automatically report innocent parents simply because a child’s cancer recurs.
Do the ends justify the means if they use Gestapo-like techniques to discover them? If parents are subject to this extra scrutiny, who’s next? Will someone turn us in for alleged elder abuse if we bring our sick parents in for treatment?