Monday, July 10, 2006

Kinda depressing post today.

So, part of this today will be a cross post with my other blog, I'll do that last, so if you've already read it, you don't have to slog through it to get to the other stuff.
I was watching Discovery the other day, I'm an avid CSI watcher (the original), and I know I've heard in the news before that CSI has helped law enforcement as well as the criminals. Well, on Discovery, they do shows like The New Detectives, which do the same thing, they were actually talking about dirt when I was watching it, and I was curious why people don't talke about the Discovery shows helping the criminals. I guess they don't go into as much detail, but I learned from this episode, that you should always clean the dirt off your shoes, or your shovels, or tires if you happen to bury someone somewhere where the dirt is different from the dirt around your house, not that I'll need to use that info but...
Like I said, I'm an avid CSI fan, I didn't used to be, but ever since they had that murder in the airplane, I've been hooked. So, one of the episodes that sticks in my mind is the one titled The Buffalo, where a teenage daughter has her boyfriend kill her father, mother, and brothers to stop her father from sexually abusing her daughter, whose father is also her father (pretty damn sick), because he sexually abused her and she knew he was doing it to her daughter. Well, anyway I saw that again tonight.
And on the line of depressing stuff I watched tonight, I watched a movie called The Burning Bed, which is about a woman who's being abused by her husband, and she finally gets sick of it and burns down the house, takes her children and leaves, and then you see the story as her telling it to her lawyer while she's in jail, with the trial at the end. Anyways, I chose to watch this because I watched part of it for one of my sociology classes, and unfortunately we were unable to finish it, so I wanted to watch the end. It's obviously very sad, but even more sad because it's set in the late 1970's, so everytime the police are called they are unable to do anything about it, and there are no services to help her, even though it's very evident that she's been beaten.
And onto the cross-post:
So, I was watching one of those news shows, Dateline, (go here for the story) last night on NBC. And it was about this couple that couldn't have children, so they were using the Internet to find a pregnant mother who was willing to give up her child. Well, they found one and this mother said she was 6 or so months pregnant and that they would be the perfect family for her child and that she was 100% sure they should have the child, so over a matter of months she would email and talk to them via phone and she became pretty good friends with the wife, and over time she would ask them for money to cover rent or food or whatever. They even had papers drawn up and signed by the mother and the couple for all the legal crap that goes with adoptions.
But there was another couple that she was doing the same thing too. Then maybe when she was about 8 months pregnant she stopped communication with both couples. Now, they went online looking for this mother and started talking to each other in a forum or chat room, and found out that this girl had used the same first name but different last names, same soc sec number, and address in the same area. So Dateline got in touch with one of the couples and asked them to try again to contact this woman, in which the wife sent an email asking what was going on and that she was really worried. The mother replied to this, and the wife, mother, and Dateline set up a meeting in a hotel room close to the mother (Dateline people posing as an attorney, with hidden cameras in the room), so they met and the Dateline people pretended to get info that they would need for the adoption papers. Also, because this couple had already adopted one child the mother said she had a little girl at home as well. During this meeting, the wife still was hoping that it wasn't a scam and that the mother was going to give the baby to her (she was very pregnant looking, according to her timeline she was almost ready to give birth, but she wasn't that pregnant looking). The mother also asked for more money to cover her rent since she wasn't working, and some for food, which the Dateline people set up with their own money and bought a $100 Walmart card.
That night after the meeting the mother met up with a girl, and they proceeded to use the money to buy baby clothes, bottles, and other baby stuff. Though the mother was calling the wife telling her certian things she was doing, such as going out to eat with her child, etc...
Then, she called the wife that night and said she was having contractions and abruptly cut them off. The wife tried calling back for 2 hours, and the number was disconnected.
So, the next day, the Dateline people went and found the mother (she thought they were still attorneys) and said the contractions had stopped. They started asking her her real name and showing her pictures of the person they found who had the name they gave her (this being the girl she met up with the night before), as well as other couples they found she had scammed. She got in her car and drove off while they were asking questions. Then, she called the wife and set up an interview in the hotel again.
As she was talking to the Dateline person, the interviewer was asking her why she did it, and if she had any idea how much it hurt these people, etc. Then the couple she had talked with most recently came into the room and she started crying in front of them and telling them how sorry she was. Though, I didn't see any bit of remorse in her eyes, maybe a little surprise from the "Oh, crap they caught me" thought that had to be running through her mind, but other than that, she was just lying and putting on an act again.
Later, the Dateline people are interviewing the 2 original couples as well as 2 other families she had led on the same way a year earlier. And they were all very hurt (as I can imagine) in what she had done to them. One of the husbands (the one that actually met her) said he just wanted to strangle her. And unfortunately there's no laws against do this to people, there's not really anything law enforcement can charge them with. It could be fraud, but they said it's very hard to catch them, and actually charge them with it.
How cruel can a person be to do this to people?

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