Summer's last day included lecture on being 'better girl' (Just makes me sick)

[The Straight Story]

Summer's last day included lecture on being 'better girl'
Abused girl's funeral delayed so defense can order second autopsy

Hours before Summer Phelps died, her father took her on one last car ride.

Jonathan Lytle told police he didn’t want the 4-year-old girl, who was already bruised and battered from abuse, to disrupt a visit by a nurse at the family’s Monroe Street home in Spokane, according to a search warrant filed Monday.

But he also took the opportunity, during a stop at a Cheney grocery store parking lot during that March 10 outing, to speak to his daughter about “cleaning up her messes and being a better girl,” the documents state. The two went to a comic book store to wait out the nurse and then went home about 12:30 p.m., and Summer went directly to the bathroom and began washing urine-soaked clothes in a bathtub.

According to police, the girl died about nine hours later while still in the bathroom, about the time Lytle received a delivery of Kentucky Fried Chicken to his apartment at 707 N. Monroe. He took the girl to Deaconess Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.

Lytle, 28, and his 32-year-old wife, Adriana Lytle, who was Summer’s stepmother, are charged with homicide by abuse.

http://www.spokesmanreview.com/breaking/story.asp?ID=9200

[southerncrone]

1. No punishment is severe enough for these asswipes!

[rebel with a cause]

2. Let's face it, not everyone should be allowed to have children.

Just the fact that they thought a four year old was old enough to be punished for wetting her clothes and made to wash them out by hand is enough for them to lose her in my book.

I am wondering why the child was not with the birth mother? I don't want to get it started again about me thinking the man shouldn't have the children, but I always wonder when the child is this young, why the mother doesn't have them. Especially when the father and step mother are this abusive.

So bad, so sad.

[The Straight Story]

3. In my case, the kids would have been better off with me

My x ended up with the kids, got remarried, they were abused. I did not hear from them/her for 8 years - until the X died.

Two of my 3 boys were so poisoned against me I still have not seen them. My oldest son did come to live with me for a short term (he is 20). They were lied to, abused, and confused. No wonder my other two don't like me too well - they bought into the lies. My oldest son had 10 years with me an knew better.

He is a mess though. damned sad to me. Everyone lost in this, and the main culprit of all, my X, is not here to answer his questions as to why she did the things she did.

[rebel with a cause]

4. I have known of cases such as yours where the children

would or were much better off with the father. I have also known fathers that were more nurturing than the mother was. I am sorry to hear about your children and the fact that they have been so hurt by the treatment they received from their mother. There is so much of this type of thing that goes on, and so much damage is done by it. So many people have children and then don't really care enough about them to make an attempt to raise them as healthy human beings.

I did a home study one time in a custody battle, and was suppose to come up with a recommendation for who the teenage boy should stay with. The mother had him, but in the end, I could not show why either parent should have the boy. The mother was really angry at me, but she was one of the most inefficient mothers I had ever seen. She had absolutely no control over the boy at all, and he was a fifteen year old juvenile delinquent. I would have recommended the father, but he was not much better. Most people involved in the boys life agreed with me. I don't know what happened in the case, because I just handed over the information over to another agency and was never told what was decided.

My caution/fear in posting anything about custody was because of a flaming I took a few nights ago because I posted something which involved a custody case, and people assumed I meant a lot of things I did not mean.

[The Straight Story]

5. Sorry you got flamed

It happens here at times :)

I think it all boils down to a case by case basis, and sometimes hindsight is 20-20 in these cases.

Probably where things go wrong are when we start sounding like insurance companies and basing things on statistics. One could probably cite stats saying men abuse kids more than women, but that really does not give one warrant to ad hoc assign kids to their moms because 'usually' it is better for them.

It is a touchy subject as I think many men have been shortchanged by the system.

Eventually my X and her new husband adopted the kids, and yet I still kept paying support. No one at child support believed me. A year later, they got off their butts and went to the courts and found out I was telling the truth. The X owed me money I over paid, and she ignored the court by not telling them of a change of status. The result? I was never repaid and told if I wanted my money back I would have to sue her...she broke the law, they took money out of my check to pay her, and then when it all came out as a lie by her (and she told me she would give them the paperwork if I sent her 5k) they basically said I was on my own.

I got screwed from day one not getting to see them, even though I had legal rights to.

Sigh - sorry, I am ranting now :) All I am saying is I can see where it is a hot issue here.

[rebel with a cause]

10. You are right it is a case by case basis.

When I worked with children with behavior problems, there were many examples of abusive/neglectful mothers, but there were also many abusive/absent fathers. Sexual abuse is more likely to be done by a male, but I had at least one case where the mother sexually abused her son and growing up I knew of a case of this also. I'm sure there are many more of these cases than we know, and of course women sexually abusing young boys not their sons happens more than we like to admit.

Your ex sounds like a real piece of work. When I got my divorce, my kids were all for it. They were old enough that I gave them the choice of who they wanted to live with, and they chose me. They did not even want visits with their father anywhere but at our house, which was very unfair to me but I loved my kids. It did not work out very well, because he harassed me so much every time he came to see them, that I usually called the visits off. He could have taken them out to a movie, to the park or somewhere, but he wouldn't; and when I would try to leave so they could have a visit with him there, he would block me from leaving. Our divorce relationship was no better than our marriage. And of course there was the child support.

I asked for nothing when we got divorced, but the lawyers and judge decided that he could pay the house mortgage payment in lieu of child support. Ha, he very seldom did, and when he did he borrowed the money from his family. Other times I would have to come up with the money. Well, to make a long story short, I was unable to work so was going to school and living on student loans. I also got food stamps to help out, and that is how the government got involved. They came in and took US to court for back child support. It seems the state had decided that if they took both parties to court then there was a better chance they would get their money. After dealing with my husband for a while, the lawyers and the court decided it would be easier for me to pay my own back child support and for them to put in the papers that my ex would need to pay me back. I paid the money to the necessary parties, and that was it. For me to get the money I would have to sue my ex myself. But it did not end there. When the government began taking child support for our one child out of his paycheck (my daughter and I were both working part time jobs by then, so I didn't ask support for her), he would come to the house and harass me for the support money back. By this time I was tired of him taking every penny he could from me, so I refused to give him any more.

Anyway, he never paid me any of the money he owed me, we lost the house, and I was happier for not having the connection to him. In the last few years as my health began to fail, my ex has come through and helped me out with a little money now and then. Does he do this to make up for the hell he put me through in earlier times? Yes he does, but he also does it because it makes him look good to other people, but I don't really care. I appreciate the things he has done to help and have told him that this pays back the money he owed me, and it has helped to make things better between us: much to his now wife's anger. Now she is a real piece of work and is a match to him. ;-)

[noonwitch]

7. The courts are coming around on daddies and custody

Although in my job, it's usually because mom did have custody and blew it.

[PreacherCasey]

15. here's hoping... I've had NOTHING BUT PROBLEMS eom

[NorthernSpy]

6. "My house, my rules. You're not at Mommy's house anymore"

-- something that stepmother Adriana Lytle reportedly said to four-year-old Summer.


Torturers are often suprisingly self-righteous about the abuse they inflict. They believe that their victims have misbehaved, and that they are therefore completely in the right in imposing harsh and humiliating punishments. They may even rationalize their actions as being in the victim's own best interest, and they insist the brutality they mete out serves the useful purpose of preventing future problems. They never fail to remind others that the victim could have avoided the most horrifying punishments by behaving differently; it seems to be critically important to them that their victims "chose" their fate -- eg, 'she knew ahead of time what the consequences would be, so she has no one to blame but herself'.

In other words, the people who torture children to death are really no different in basic mentality to ordinary "discipline" hawks, defenders of corporal punishment, and the authoritarian "law-and-order" harpies who condone police brutality and other manifestations of state violence.

[Nikki Stone1]

8. We have an administration full of self-righteous torturers

These parents would fit right in with Bushco

[Jonathan50]

16. It's amazingly easy how people get caught up in sadism..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

The Stanford prison experiment was a psychological study of the human response to captivity, in particular to the real world circumstances of prison life and the effects of imposed social roles on behaviour. It was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Philip Zimbardo of Stanford University. Undergraduate volunteers played the roles of guards and prisoners living in a mock prison that was constructed in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their assigned roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to genuinely dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and two had to be removed from the experiment early. Despite the now highly unsanitary and out of control conditions evident, only one of 50 observers, graduate interviewer Christina Maslach, objected to the experiment. Zimbardo then ended the experiment early.

If you read the whole thing it's just astounding how fast normal psychologically healthy people became sadistic brutes when given authority over others.

They had to end the planned two week experiment after only six days.

[youthere]

9. They used a F*cking SHOCK COLLAR on her!

Read the warrant...if you have a very strong stomach. That poor child. What hell they put her through.

[rebel with a cause]

12. Read it.

I think they need a second opinion on whether the child had been sexually abused. It sounds to me like her father maybe did something to her anus besides push in a mop handle. I won't even use one of those shock collars on my dog that barks too much, how could they use it on a small child like that. IDIOTS!!!!! TERRIBLE IDIOTS!!!!!!!!

[Quantess]

11. In that photo,

the Lytles are crying and sad---for themselves, because they are in big trouble.

[jmowreader]

13. Cheney? This guy was REALLY worried about the nurse

Cheney is 17 miles south of Spokane...and you've got to do some twists and turns to get there.

I wonder why he picked Cheney. It is an out-of-the-way place.

[WinkyDink]

14. He liked the name.

[wicket]

17. That poor little girl

So heartbreaking :cry:

Here she is:



Oh god :cry: :cry:

[smirkymonkey]

19. God, she looks like a real MONSTER!

I am sure she deserved it.

:sarcasm:

Poor little thing - I know a bit about what she went through, and I'm not lying when I said there were many times at her age when I really wanted my step mother to kill me just so I could escape the torture. Still, it was horrible that she had to live through it in the first place. Things like this make me have a really hard time beleiving in a benevolent god.

Rest in peace, little Summer.

[smirkymonkey]

18. I sincerely hope they both get life in prison with some very

nasty, abusive block mates. What sick fucks! Personally, I think the death penalty is too good for them.

Poor little girl, she went to her grave thinking that the problem was her. :cry:

[jannyk]

20. Max sentence 26 years?!?

According to the article the following is true

"Homicide by abuse normally carries a maximum penalty of 26 ½ years in prison."

Why would that be???? Homicide by abuse is basically homicide by torture and is usually inflicted on children. Why would that 'qualify' for less than a mandatory life sentence? I don't understand........

[wicket]

21. kick for Summer

:cry: