Today's Example of Man's Inhumanity Toward Fellow Man

We are all appalled by the big headline grabbing examples of inhumanity. The Holocaust of the 1930'2 and 1940's. The starvation in Rwanda. The killing fields of Cambodia. And so on. Often overlooked is the inhumanity in our local communities and neighborhoods. Sadly, a disgusting example was discovered in the Cincinnati area. Prepare to be disgusted as you read this article:

Oven-like attic was her prison

Neighbors say couple often kept mother, 59, locked up

WEST PRICE HILL – She was given some saltines, a small bottle of water, a pillow, a sheet and a bucket for a toilet. Two doors were then padlocked as her daughter, Adrienna Daniels, 28, and her boyfriend left their Dewey Avenue home June 23 for Daniels’ planned C-section at University Hospital.

For three days, while Greater Cincinnati simmered in a heat emergency, 59-year-old Mary Daniels baked in a sweltering third-floor attic as outside temperatures simmered in the 90s.

She could not get out.

Help came Saturday when she broke out a window and began yelling. “I can’t take it anymore,” Mary Daniels cried out to 13-year-old Victoria Klein, a neighbor who stood peering up at the kind lady whose normally stark white skin had turned as red as a lobster.

Firefighters raced to the duplex, up the stairs and past a family dog who slumbered in the cool air of a nearby air conditioner.

The key elements of this story is of course the miserable daughter and her druggie boyfriend who mistreated an elderly lady. However, there is much more to the story. The sub-headline say the neighbors knew they kept the woman locked up. All evil needs to succeed is for good people to do nothing. Problem is when you read deeper into the story you find that neighbors had reported the situation:

Klein said she and her sister called agencies that advocate for the elderly at least three times to report what they thought was abuse but were told that Mary Daniels was a year shy of their services.

They said they called the landlord, who never came by as he promised.

It is always easy to look back after a situation comes to light and say "should of done this or that," but I'm not sure what else the neighbors could do without directly witnessing physical violence. I am concerned about the government bureaucrat who refused to help solely because of her age. People age at different paces. Dismissing a cry for help because of an arbitrary age cut off is nonsense. We have seen reports of people in their 30's and 40's developing senile dementia or Alzheimer's. Conversely, there are other stories of people being active past 100 years of age.

There is nothing funny about this story, but there is a punch line. The miserable excuse for a daughter is attending college to become a medical assistant. Great. I'm sure she will be very compassionate.