GUILTY RI - Zah-Nae Rothgeb, 9, handicap, cerebral palsy, dies of cruelty, filthy home, Warwick, 3 Jan 2019

From this article:
Around 2 p.m., the boy said, he left the house to get three siblings off the bus and start dinner for the children.

About 4:30 — roughly eight hours after Zah-Nae was first placed in the tub — one of the other siblings went into the bathroom to check on her and found her “lying face down naked in the empty tub, unresponsive.”

The boy the mentioned is 15 and has Asperger’s. He was doing the "caring" for these kids, not this adoptive mom. I'm glad he was there to help them. It's unfortunate though because he will probably carry guilt at the death.
 
From this article:


The boy the mentioned is 15 and has Asperger’s. He was doing the "caring" for these kids, not this adoptive mom. I'm glad he was there to help them. It's unfortunate though because he will probably carry guilt at the death.
I feel terrible for that boy. He should have never been placed with such a heavy burden.
 
This story is not one that surprises me unfortunately. Families who are willing to take in children with special needs is minimal, let alone those willing to adopt permanently. People have been known to use fostering/adopting special needs children as a business because of all of the state services that are at their disposal. As a parent of a 9 year old with severe cerebral palsy (more severe than Zah-nae) I can vouch for the fact that caregiver burnout is real. I'm not making excuses for this woman by bringing up caregiver burnout, but she should have never been allowed to adopt that many children with special needs. She was selfish and didn't reach out to any of the resources she had for help, instead relied on a 15 year old child with Aspergers to fill her role while she recovered?!!! Zah-nae's tragic death was a failure on the shoulders of many people and I'm glad that RI DCYF is acknowledging and hopefully will hold those who didn't step in responsible.
 
This story is not one that surprises me unfortunately. Families who are willing to take in children with special needs is minimal, let alone those willing to adopt permanently. People have been known to use fostering/adopting special needs children as a business because of all of the state services that are at their disposal. As a parent of a 9 year old with severe cerebral palsy (more severe than Zah-nae) I can vouch for the fact that caregiver burnout is real. I'm not making excuses for this woman by bringing up caregiver burnout, but she should have never been allowed to adopt that many children with special needs. She was selfish and didn't reach out to any of the resources she had for help, instead relied on a 15 year old child with Aspergers to fill her role while she recovered?!!! Zah-nae's tragic death was a failure on the shoulders of many people and I'm glad that RI DCYF is acknowledging and hopefully will hold those who didn't step in responsible.

Coroner rules disabled 17-year-old accidentally drowned in bathtub

This same thing happened to a large family that adopted special needs kids a few years ago. The house and kids were clean so it was ruled an accident. This disabled 17 year old was also found by a sibling. These large families do get very overwhelmed and burned out with caregiving.

The problem starts with large families being approved to adopt more and more kids. There is a term for this that compares some of these families to animal hoarders.
 

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