Victoria Phanthtaranth, Freddy Mendez, and their family, before Mendez murdered Phanthtaranth’s daughter, Alexis. Oklahoma County District Court
Currently, at least 29 states have laws criminalizing parents’ failure to protect their children from abuse. As BuzzFeed reports, in some states “the crime is known as injury to a child “by omission, in others it is called “permitting child abuse” or “enabling child abuse.”
BuzzFeed goes on to explain that
In addition, prosecutors in at least 19 states can use other, more general laws against criminal negligence in the care of a child, or placing a child in a dangerous situation.
These laws make parents responsible for what they did not do. Typically, people cannot be prosecuted for failing to thwart a murder; they had to have actually helped carry it out. But child abuse is an exception, and the logic behind these laws is simple: Parents and caregivers bear a solemn duty to protect their children.
The video below explores one such prosecution, that of a 24-year-old woman named Victoria Phanthtaranth.
The story begins with Judge Kenneth Watson who said in open court this March “You know, this case has haunted me.”
As BuzzFeed reported:
Before him, in prison-standard jumpsuit, was a 24-year-old woman named Victoria Phanthtaranth. Just a year earlier, Watson, a state judge in Oklahoma City, had sentenced her to 35 years in prison.
Now Watson was reconsidering her plight. In three and a half decades of practicing law, he said from the bench, “I’ve never had a case that has stuck with me the way this has stuck with me.”
Below is her story, or you can go to BuzzFeed and read all the details as well as those of several other women who were battered, bereaved and found themselves behind bars.
Most interesting, as BuzzFeed reports and covers in the video is the fact that what troubles Watson the most and something “he acknowledged both in the sentencing hearing and in an interview.
Had Mendez just pled guilty, instead of taking his case to trial, he probably never would have learned of the abuse Mendez meted out on Phanthtaranth. “They both would be in right now,” he said, “and nobody would have even had a second guess about it.”
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