FL - Fendra Molme, 11 months, dies in hot car while parents attend church, Palm Bay, May 2023 *arrest*

[imstilla.grandma]

Probable cause affidavit:

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23832794/bulaine-molme-pca.pdf

On Friday, the mother posted a $15,000 bond to get out of jail. Moving forward, a local criminal defense attorney says this case will be difficult to prove in court.

"If you really assume someone is taking the baby, then I think you have a good defense," said board-certified criminal trial expert, Geoff Golub.

"I don’t know what the state is going to do," he said. "I think sometimes you just have tragic things that happen. Obviously, she is going to be scarred for the rest of her life."

"They had every intention to stop at daycare, to take their child there, and as they're driving they go into an autopilot mode, and we have a brain memory system that puts us into that autopilot mode, and in fact what it does is it suppresses our conscious memory system so that we're more likely than to do something out of habit," said David Diamond who’s a USF Psychology Professor.

Golub says a child abuse charge makes more sense in this case because culpable negligence will be hard to prove.

"If in fact, she was going in a hurry, she was going in to give a sermon or something and she truly believed someone else was taking the baby I think that you have a very good defense because I don’t think you can show she had a reckless disregard or she just didn’t care what happened," Golub concluded.

Manslaughter charges may not hold against Florida mother whose baby died in a hot car

The mom charged with manslaughter after her infant died in a hot car bonded out of jail, and the charges may not hold up in court.

www.fox35orlando.com

Florida mom arrested after 11-month-old left in hot car while she officiated church service dies

Bulaine Molme, 37, has been charged with manslaughter in the hot-car death of her 11-month-old daughter.

nypost.com

 

[iamshadow21]

Here's one scenario I think could've happened:
Arriving to church late, she exits the car, takes her purse and whatever materials she needs for the service. This requires two hands, and she could not carry DD in arms, nor did she come prepared with a sling or other carrier. She enters through the Sunday school and delegates a child to fetch DD from the car. Wasting no time, she heads for the pulpit alongside DH. In her haste she has neglected to give the child the car key (or key fob). The child heads to the car but finds it locked. However, service is now in full swing with the First Lady present, and the child is either not assertive enough at whatever age, or dares not interrupt the pastor, First Lady and elders, and (most importantly) God. The child, not aware of the dangers of hot car deaths, also obediently knows their place in Sunday school (or perhaps the main service itself), and fails to tell anyone of their quandary, which is quickly forgotten. With this gaping chasm in communication, DD, locked inside the car, succumbs to hyperthermia over the next three hours.
MOO

I would say that in that scenario, IMO, the responsibility still lies with the adult.

MOO

 

[musicaljoke]

I would say that in that scenario, IMO, the responsibility still lies with the adult.

MOO

Yes, the responsibility lies with the adult. The scenario is just to show how easily it can happen, not to absolve the adult of their responsibility. I am convinced that anyone who claims it could never happen to them, may in fact be the most vulnerable. It's important to recognize that this can happen to anyone, therefore it is so important to have a system in place to prevent it, and support for those who suffer the worst grief imaginable, of causing the death of their own child.

 

[MyBelle]

Probable cause affidavit:

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23832794/bulaine-molme-pca.pdf

On Friday, the mother posted a $15,000 bond to get out of jail. Moving forward, a local criminal defense attorney says this case will be difficult to prove in court.

"If you really assume someone is taking the baby, then I think you have a good defense," said board-certified criminal trial expert, Geoff Golub.

"I don’t know what the state is going to do," he said. "I think sometimes you just have tragic things that happen. Obviously, she is going to be scarred for the rest of her life."

"They had every intention to stop at daycare, to take their child there, and as they're driving they go into an autopilot mode, and we have a brain memory system that puts us into that autopilot mode, and in fact what it does is it suppresses our conscious memory system so that we're more likely than to do something out of habit," said David Diamond who’s a USF Psychology Professor.

Golub says a child abuse charge makes more sense in this case because culpable negligence will be hard to prove.

"If in fact, she was going in a hurry, she was going in to give a sermon or something and she truly believed someone else was taking the baby I think that you have a very good defense because I don’t think you can show she had a reckless disregard or she just didn’t care what happened," Golub concluded.

Manslaughter charges may not hold against Florida mother whose baby died in a hot car

The mom charged with manslaughter after her infant died in a hot car bonded out of jail, and the charges may not hold up in court.

www.fox35orlando.com

Florida mom arrested after 11-month-old left in hot car while she officiated church service dies

Bulaine Molme, 37, has been charged with manslaughter in the hot-car death of her 11-month-old daughter.

nypost.com

BBM. I doubt the "auto pilot" defense will work in this case because there is no indication whatsoever that the baby was going to be dropped off at daycare. I think it more likely that the baby was asleep when the mother arrived at church and she decided to let her sleep rather than awaken her.

JMO

 

[PayrollNerd]

Case ID: 05-2023-CF-032729-AXXX-XX
Name: MOLME BULAINE
Case Type: NON CAPITAL MURDER
Charge: AGGRAVATED MANSLAUGHTER OF A CHILD

BECA Splash

 

[wary]

BBM. I doubt the "auto pilot" defense will work in this case because there is no indication whatsoever that the baby was going to be dropped off at daycare. I think it more likely that the baby was asleep when the mother arrived at church and she decided to let her sleep rather than awaken her.

JMO

Personally, I think the description of autopilot defense shows that the attorney is the typical one who’s interviewed, but who has not bothered to acquaint himself with the facts of the case.

 

[Bounceycat]

Personally, I think the description of autopilot defense shows that the attorney is the typical one who’s interviewed, but who has not bothered to acquaint himself with the facts of the case.

If you read the entire article, it's clear he's speaking generally about hot car deaths.

 

[katydid23]

Personally, I think the description of autopilot defense shows that the attorney is the typical one who’s interviewed, but who has not bothered to acquaint himself with the facts of the case.

The facts of this case are few, so far. All I have seen is that Mom was supposed to be leading the service and was running late, so asked someone else to bring the baby inside for her. Dad was mentioned in the 1st article, but I didn't see him mentioned in the 2nd article I read.

There are 2 scenarios that come to mind----She pulls in, is in a hurry, and asks the older siblings to take the baby inside.
OR she hurries inside and asks a friend, or neighbour, to please run out and get her baby for her. For some tragic reason it didn't happen though.

I hope it wasn't left up to the kids because I think they are pretty young. What a nightmare of a burden for them to carry.

ETA:

Florida mother arrested after baby left in hot car for 3 hours dies

Responders discovered that the child had been left in a car for approximately three hours by the mother as she and her family attended church services.

www.clickorlando.com

Investigators determined that Molme arrived late to the service, which she was set to officiate. Molme believed that the child had been brought inside by a member of the church, police said.


Hours later, however, Molme realized that her child was not inside the church or with any of the church’s members, a release by the police department shows.

The release shows that Molme immediately went out to her car, where she found the child in the car seat, unresponsive.

After first responders showed up, the child was taken to the hospital, where she later died, according to investigators.

 

[katydid23]

The above article said :
Molme believed that the child had been brought inside by a member of the church, police said.

So it is interesting wording. It does not say specifically that she asked someone to bring her child inside. It says she 'believed' someone had done so.

Maybe she had a friend that often or usually did so?

 

[Lilibet]

@chipwhitley posted the link to this WaPo article from 2009 early in the thread. It’s called “Fatal Distraction” and it’s a long and painful, well-researched and very important article about loving, responsible parents who have forgotten their child in a hot car. It may be beyond a paywall for most and it doesn’t have a “gift article” option, so I’m going to quote in two posts what I think are very important points for everyone to know.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

1) What happens in the brain that causes a loving parent to forget their child is in the car.

2) The reason we have trouble understanding how on earth a loving parent could ever forget their child.

Starting with number one, the brain and the memory:

“Memory is a machine,” he says, “and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you’re capable of forgetting your cellphone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child.”

[David] Diamond is a professor of molecular physiology at the University of South Florida and a consultant to the veterans hospital in Tampa. He’s here for a national science conference to give a speech about his research, which involves the intersection of emotion, stress and memory. What he’s found is that under some circumstances, the most sophisticated part of our thought-processing center can be held hostage to a competing memory system, a primitive portion of the brain that is -- by a design as old as the dinosaur’s -- inattentive, pigheaded, nonanalytical, stupid.

The human brain, he says, is a magnificent but jury-rigged device in which newer and more sophisticated structures sit atop a junk heap of prototype brains still used by lower species. At the top of the device are the smartest and most nimble parts: the prefrontal cortex, which thinks and analyzes, and the hippocampus, which makes and holds on to our immediate memories. At the bottom is the basal ganglia, nearly identical to the brains of lizards, controlling voluntary but barely conscious actions.

Diamond says that in situations involving familiar, routine motor skills, the human animal presses the basal ganglia into service as a sort of auxiliary autopilot. When our prefrontal cortex and hippocampus are planning our day on the way to work, the ignorant but efficient basal ganglia is operating the car; that’s why you’ll sometimes find yourself having driven from point A to point B without a clear recollection of the route you took, the turns you made or the scenery you saw.

Ordinarily, says Diamond, this delegation of duty “works beautifully, like a symphony. But sometimes, it turns into the ‘1812 Overture.’ The cannons take over and overwhelm.”

By experimentally exposing rats to the presence of cats, and then recording electrochemical changes in the rodents’ brains, Diamond has found that stress -- either sudden or chronic -- can weaken the brain’s higher-functioning centers, making them more susceptible to bullying from the basal ganglia. He’s seen the same sort of thing play out in cases he’s followed involving infant deaths in cars.

“The quality of prior parental care seems to be irrelevant,” he said. “The important factors that keep showing up involve a combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep and change in routine, where the basal ganglia is trying to do what it’s supposed to do, and the conscious mind is too weakened to resist. What happens is that the memory circuits in a vulnerable hippocampus literally get overwritten, like with a computer program. Unless the memory circuit is rebooted -- such as if the child cries, or, you know, if the wife mentions the child in the back -- it can entirely disappear.”

<snip>

British psychologist James Reason coined the term the “Swiss Cheese Model” in 1990 to explain through analogy why catastrophic failures can occur in organizations despite multiple layers of defense. Reason likens the layers to slices of Swiss cheese, piled upon each other, five or six deep. The holes represent small, potentially insignificant weaknesses. Things will totally collapse only rarely, he says, but when they do, it is by coincidence -- when all the holes happen to align so that there is a breach through the entire system.

 

[Lilibet]

Again, from the WaPo link, this time about why we have trouble understanding how any parent could forget their child in a hot car.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

“This is a case of pure evil negligence of the worse kind . . . He deserves the death sentence.”

“I wonder if this was his way of telling his wife that he didn’t really want a kid.”

“He was too busy chasing after real estate commissions. This shows how morally corrupt people in real estate-related professions are.”

These were readers’ online comments to The Washington Post news article of July 10, 2008, reporting the circumstances of the death of Miles Harrison’s son. These comments were typical of many others, and they are typical of what happens again and again, year after year in community after community, when these cases arise. A substantial proportion of the public reacts not merely with anger, but with frothing vitriol.

Ed Hickling believes he knows why. Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.

Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. “We are vulnerable, but we don’t want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we’ll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don’t want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.”

 

[Lilibet]

I think these preventive tips have already been mentioned on the thread, including the teddy bear tip mentioned by @katydid23.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/06/AR2009030601690.html?tid=a_inl_manual

KidsAndCars.org, an advocacy group for child vehicle safety, urges some basic measures to prevent the tragedy of children being inadvertently left in vehicles:

Always put something you'll need for work -- cellphone, handbag, employee badge, etc. -- on the floor of the back seat, near the child.

Keep a large teddy bear in the child's car seat when it's not occupied. When the child is placed in the seat, put the teddy bear up front in the passenger seat. It's a visual reminder that anytime the teddy bear is in the passenger seat, the child is in the back.

Make arrangements with your child's day-care provider or babysitter that you will always call them if your child will not be there on a particular day as scheduled. Ask them to always phone you if your child does not show up when expected.

 

[10ofRods]

My thoughts exactly. Pure neglect here IMO. At least. AT LEAST! If there’s someone they trusted with the baby who could babysit then they should have left her with said person. If they could they could have just brought her in with them and found something to keep her calm.

Others have posted that there was a Sunday School with possible childcare. I assume that's where the mom thought the baby was.

Mom says she thought someone else was bringing her. Which is odd, if she didn't actually see/have convo with said person before going off without Baby.

Not disagreeing, but I don't think Mom thought the baby was going to be at the service.

I wonder who that other someone is/was.

imo

 

[iamshadow21]

Yes, the responsibility lies with the adult. The scenario is just to show how easily it can happen, not to absolve the adult of their responsibility. I am convinced that anyone who claims it could never happen to them, may in fact be the most vulnerable. It's important to recognize that this can happen to anyone, therefore it is so important to have a system in place to prevent it, and support for those who suffer the worst grief imaginable, of causing the death of their own child.

For me... and I don't know or assume that anyone else feels this way... there's a difference between someone who forgets they have a child with them at all, and someone who knows they have a child with them but prioritises starting a service on time and presumes 'someone else will get the baby' without ENSURING that happens. I do wonder if that's why we're seeing the level of charges we are, or if that's a standard charge with all hot car death cases in Florida.

Not prejudging anybody here, BTW, I'm just waiting until we get more information.

I live in Australia, and as you'd imagine with our climate, we get our share of deaths in hot cars, both of kids and of pets. And sometimes it's an honest mistake, and sometimes it's something like a parent who couldn't be bothered taking their kid when they went into the shop or the TAB for an hour or two who comes back to find a weeping crowd of strangers and the fire department and ambulance and kicks off because their car window has been smashed, rather than being upset about their kids. There's a whole spectrum of circumstances and behaviours. Probably the saddest I can think of was a parent whose vehicle had been carjacked. The thief dumped the car. The baby wasn't found in time. I don't recall where that case happened. Perhaps Texas? I imagine it's happened more than once, though. I remember following the case of Ky'air and Kason around Christmas as it was happening, though that was cold, not heat. Poor little mites.

MOO

 

[10ofRods]

Again, from the WaPo link, this time about why we have trouble understanding how any parent could forget their child in a hot car.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

“This is a case of pure evil negligence of the worse kind . . . He deserves the death sentence.”

“I wonder if this was his way of telling his wife that he didn’t really want a kid.”

“He was too busy chasing after real estate commissions. This shows how morally corrupt people in real estate-related professions are.”

These were readers’ online comments to The Washington Post news article of July 10, 2008, reporting the circumstances of the death of Miles Harrison’s son. These comments were typical of many others, and they are typical of what happens again and again, year after year in community after community, when these cases arise. A substantial proportion of the public reacts not merely with anger, but with frothing vitriol.

Ed Hickling believes he knows why. Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.

Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. “We are vulnerable, but we don’t want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we’ll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don’t want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.”

Sounds like people need to be taught, rather than just come up with their own ideas about things.

The articles urging people to actually learn something and DO something (such as leave something essential in the back seat) are on the right track. Most of us have never forgotten a baby, dog or package of ice cream in a hot car. We have to learn not to overbook ourselves and not be rushing. If we're always rushing, we are apt to do things we wish we hadn't and blame it on "memory" or "distraction."

Even responsible people have things go wrong, of course. I can't buy into Hickling's theory because my own work involves lots of troubling information, daily (natural selection isn't pretty, but it is very interesting).

When I hear about people who leave their kids in hot cars, I am reminded to watch the things I take for granted (like backing out of the driveway). For lots of things that I might forget (all not very important), I set timers and reminders. I learned to do this. I didn't rely just on my own brain. My method of not forgetting my babies in the back seat was to put my purse (with phone and office keys in it) in the back seat. Sure, I could have gone off to work without my pens, pencils, markers, phone and keys - but I sure would have noticed 5-6 minutes later when I tried to get in my office. Even today, out of habit, I still do this.

Air traffic controllers, rail operators, welders, petroleum workers, firemen and many others have to learn these routines. So my "narrative" is that this family was, perhaps, hectic and over-burdened that morning and whatever failsafes they had in place were not solidly habitual. It takes time to build memory (which Hickling does not mention - he doesn't mention the substrates of enduring situational memory, which we think are mostly in the hippocampus - and it takes different people a varying number of times to train that part of the brain). Adrenalin is a disrupter, so the mental system has to be tested and tried (and people can be taught to be aware of their own weakness, their own excitement).

I'd rather be late to work and have my safety habits still in place. But it's hard for young mothers (and typically, one wants another adult/father to be the checker in these systems). IMO. Or father and someone else (best friend/auntie/grandmother). That's how humans work best, in my own anthropological world.

It's a terrible, preventable tragedy, but I don't think it's just the young mother who is to blame. IMO.

 

[Lilibet]

Sounds like people need to be taught, rather than just come up with their own ideas about things.

The articles urging people to actually learn something and DO something (such as leave something essential in the back seat) are on the right track. Most of us have never forgotten a baby, dog or package of ice cream in a hot car. We have to learn not to overbook ourselves and not be rushing. If we're always rushing, we are apt to do things we wish we hadn't and blame it on "memory" or "distraction."

Even responsible people have things go wrong, of course. I can't buy into Hickling's theory because my own work involves lots of troubling information, daily (natural selection isn't pretty, but it is very interesting).

When I hear about people who leave their kids in hot cars, I am reminded to watch the things I take for granted (like backing out of the driveway). For lots of things that I might forget (all not very important), I set timers and reminders. I learned to do this. I didn't rely just on my own brain. My method of not forgetting my babies in the back seat was to put my purse (with phone and office keys in it) in the back seat. Sure, I could have gone off to work without my pens, pencils, markers, phone and keys - but I sure would have noticed 5-6 minutes later when I tried to get in my office. Even today, out of habit, I still do this.

Air traffic controllers, rail operators, welders, petroleum workers, firemen and many others have to learn these routines. So my "narrative" is that this family was, perhaps, hectic and over-burdened that morning and whatever failsafes they had in place were not solidly habitual. It takes time to build memory (which Hickling does not mention - he doesn't mention the substrates of enduring situational memory, which we think are mostly in the hippocampus - and it takes different people a varying number of times to train that part of the brain). Adrenalin is a disrupter, so the mental system has to be tested and tried (and people can be taught to be aware of their own weakness, their own excitement).

I'd rather be late to work and have my safety habits still in place. But it's hard for young mothers (and typically, one wants another adult/father to be the checker in these systems). IMO. Or father and someone else (best friend/auntie/grandmother). That's how humans work best, in my own anthropological world.

It's a terrible, preventable tragedy, but I don't think it's just the young mother who is to blame. IMO.

@10ofRods, were you meaning to refer to David Diamond (in my first WaPo post) regarding memory? Hickling is discussing why we have such strong feelings about these cases, not memory. Just wanting to clarify. But I agree that we absolutely do need to build memory techniques into our lives when we’re dealing with children. And I agree that most people don’t realize how fragile memory can be under stress or disrupted routines or rushing, so they don’t even think to create these techniques. We think we could never have such a lapse, but if everything lines up wrong we can. So these habits and having a second person to be the checker, as you mention, are essential.

I did have to laugh about @katydid23 and her pink rabbit in the front seat. That would never work for me because I wouldn’t even notice the rabbit after about the third time. It would seem normal to have a pink rabbit riding shotgun next to me! Putting my purse in the back would work better for me. But the point is, come up with what works for you and do it!

JMO

 

[katydid23]

For me... and I don't know or assume that anyone else feels this way... there's a difference between someone who forgets they have a child with them at all, and someone who knows they have a child with them but prioritises starting a service on time and presumes 'someone else will get the baby' without ENSURING that happens. I do wonder if that's why we're seeing the level of charges we are, or if that's a standard charge with all hot car death cases in Florida.

Not prejudging anybody here, BTW, I'm just waiting until we get more information.

I live in Australia, and as you'd imagine with our climate, we get our share of deaths in hot cars, both of kids and of pets. And sometimes it's an honest mistake, and sometimes it's something like a parent who couldn't be bothered taking their kid when they went into the shop or the TAB for an hour or two who comes back to find a weeping crowd of strangers and the fire department and ambulance and kicks off because their car window has been smashed, rather than being upset about their kids. There's a whole spectrum of circumstances and behaviours. Probably the saddest I can think of was a parent whose vehicle had been carjacked. The thief dumped the car. The baby wasn't found in time. I don't recall where that case happened. Perhaps Texas? I imagine it's happened more than once, though. I remember following the case of Ky'air and Kason around Christmas as it was happening, though that was cold, not heat. Poor little mites.

MOO

." ...there's a difference between someone who forgets they have a child with them at all, and someone who knows they have a child with them but prioritises starting a service on time and presumes 'someone else will get the baby' without ENSURING that happens."

I agree with this^^^^^.

I have great sympathy for a sleep deprived parent, thinking they've already dropped their baby off at the daycare at dawn---only to realise later that day they hadn't done so...It is devastating and a horrible accidental tragedy.

But if that parent was drunk, I'd not have the same feeling about the situation. That changes the circumstances.

In this case, it wasn't really claimed that the baby was forgotten about when mom parked that morning. She was late so she ran off to do the service and ,perhaps, didn't adequately care for the child's welfare. JMO Believing that someone else brought the child in does not really cut it, imo. It is something you need to be certain of.

Just like if you leave an 11 month old at the pool. You don't assume someone else is watching them. It has to be clear cut and the person has to be responsible and sober.

 

[katydid23]

Again, from the WaPo link, this time about why we have trouble understanding how any parent could forget their child in a hot car.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/fatal-distraction-forgetting-a-child-in-thebackseat-of-a-car-is-a-horrifying-mistake-is-it-a-crime/2014/06/16/8ae0fe3a-f580-11e3-a3a5-42be35962a52_story.html

“This is a case of pure evil negligence of the worse kind . . . He deserves the death sentence.”

“I wonder if this was his way of telling his wife that he didn’t really want a kid.”

“He was too busy chasing after real estate commissions. This shows how morally corrupt people in real estate-related professions are.”

These were readers’ online comments to The Washington Post news article of July 10, 2008, reporting the circumstances of the death of Miles Harrison’s son. These comments were typical of many others, and they are typical of what happens again and again, year after year in community after community, when these cases arise. A substantial proportion of the public reacts not merely with anger, but with frothing vitriol.

TRIGGER ALERT WARNING: If anyone watched the Ross Harris trial, and sat through the gruesome evidence, about how torturous, severely painful the poor child's long ghastly death was, the apparent vitriol might be better understood. The child doesn't just pass out and die in a peaceful sleep. They slowly cook, insides heat up and organs shut down, child in full sweat, crying out, thrashing about, sometimes get bloody from trying to pull off the straps. It can take hours to die. The whole time is horribly painful.

Ed Hickling believes he knows why. Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.

That's just the thing though---it is not always a clear accident with no fault or blame.

Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. “We are vulnerable, but we don’t want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we’ll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don’t want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.”

That^^ is an interesting take on it. Sure, I don't want to be in the same category , that would run into a church because I was late, and ignore what I consider my highest priority, and just assume someone else is going to protect my baby---whether it is from a pool, or a hot car or traffic on a crosswalk---I am responsible for my child. I agree that I want to be in a separate category.

I would not and have not called any one of them a monster [except, perhaps Ross Harris, who I think did it intentionally]

But I would AGREE that it is terrifying to think my granddaughter would die in a hot car because of my unforgivable mistake. So I DO, in fact, try and put myself in a different category, and I go over board in some ways, when I do baby sit her. Being vigilant and responsible can prevent unnecessary incidents, which is all anyone can do.

If a car runs up on the sidewalk while we are walking hand in hand, I cannot prevent such a random, horrible accident. But I can prevent her from being strapped into the car seat in summer while I am in church or in the store. And others can do the same. It is a very preventable tragedy. JMO

 

[IceIce9]

It's a terrible, preventable tragedy, but I don't think it's just the young mother who is to blame. IMO.

RSBM

The mother is 37, so not that young. She has three older children so it isn’t like a teenager with her first experience as a mom with baby.

JMO

Florida mom arrested after 11-month-old left in hot car while she officiated church service dies

Bulaine Molme, 37, has been charged with manslaughter in the hot-car death of her 11-month-old daughter.

nypost.com

 

[EmiliaRT007]

RSBM

The mother is 37, so not that young. She has three older children so it isn’t like a teenager with her first experience as a mom with baby.

JMO

Florida mom arrested after 11-month-old left in hot car while she officiated church service dies

Bulaine Molme, 37, has been charged with manslaughter in the hot-car death of her 11-month-old daughter.

nypost.com

Oh. I was reading through all these posts “maybe forgot, Sunday school” etc and started to agree with these but now I’m wondering if the mom is actually at faukt again.