Emanuel Wesley Murray's Aunt Responds to WAOD Reader Criticism-Says Teen Mom "Not raised by wolves."

Caseworkers described Bedwell as a great mother. She had returned to school and was working to turn around her life, one marred by abuse she had suffered and years in foster care SOURCE


I have had an occasion to meet some of the people we talk about on this blog so I understand that on the other side of every blog post and comment where we mention someone by name, there is a human being with a family that loves and cares about them.

Two weeks ago we posted about Emanuel Wesley Murray He was three months old when his mother's violent ex-boyfriend brutally murdered him by throwing him out of the driver's side window of a moving vehicle.

Many of you, like me, had a very strong reaction to the death of yet another child brutally killed by an adult introduced into a child's orbit by the child's mother. I was perplexed as to how a 17 year old who is three month's pregnant can end up in a relationship with someone with a well documented history of violence. Here is the latest, the State of Florida did an abuse investigation on little Emanuel when his mother was sent to the hospital, but found the 17 year old mother fit to retain custody:

In a state report released Thursday, the narrative of a child safety investigation conducted by the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office describes Jasmine Bedwell's ex-boyfriend as a violent man bent on hurting the 17-year-old foster child who was the new mother of an infant son.

The sheriff's office has a contract with the Department of Children & Families to investigate child-welfare cases.

"Last week, the paramour beat the mother up causing her to go to the hospital," child protection investigator Michelle Money-Richardson wrote in the report, which was opened April 8. "The paramour has twice kicked in the mother's door and threatened to come back with a gun."

Nearly three weeks later, the report was closed, and Bedwell kept her son after investigators and child welfare officials determined she was doing everything she could to protect him.

"The child appeared to be free of any obvious signs that would suggest abuse or neglect," the report states.

I have reviewed all of your comments on the original post and compared to some of the comments left on the local newspaper sites in Florida, I don't think the comments in their totality were unduly harsh on Emanuel Wesley's 17-year old mother, Jasmine Bedwell.

HOWEVER... someone purporting to be the aunt of Emanuel Wesley Murray has responded to some of your/my comments so I've bumped this up to post level for those who read the blog via RSS feed. Here is what she said:

i do understand that some of you really don’t understand the situtation with jasmine bedwell∧ how the relationship began .Well I DON’T EITHER I’m her aunt and i do know for a fact she did everything to protect her son.What about the state,they had a say as well.No she wasn’t raised by wolves.And we may never know what happened in this situtation but please give her credit for tring to seek help & tring to get out of the relationship. Mary Rush

First let me pause for a word of prayer and contemplation. You should pause too. If you are not prayed, meditated, chanted up, then do not click "Read More"I have drafted a letter to Aunt Mary below the fold.

Dear Aunt Mary,


Well clearly Jasmine was not raised by wolves. The Wolves would have done a better job! According to researchers:

"Wolves are very social animals. They live and hunt together in groups called packs. A wolf pack is really just another name for a family of wolves. A pack is usually made up of an adult male and female wolf and their offspring of various ages. Pack sizes range from three to twenty wolves.

A wolf pack has a definite social structure and rules of conduct. The pack leaders are the alpha male and female. These two animals are dominant over all the other wolves in the pack. ". Source

Aunt Mary,  Wolves FIGHT for their own. Wolves have FAMILIES with STRUCTURE. Wolves don't rely on the state to take custody of their 17 year old pregnant teen wolves. Wolves certainly don't have the audacity to claim to be a blood relation of a teen wolf and ADMIT that said blood relative allowed the State of Florida to do what the teen's BLOOD RELATIVES should have done! Wolves don't have a wolf foster care program.


Wolves teach their cubs how to survive so they can leave the pack and go start their own. Wolves select mates that can care for and protect their cubs. Wolves don't allow their cubs to leave their den until the cub is strong enough to participate in the hunt. The wolves don't let the teen aged wolf fend for itself  living ALONE in its own den while caring for a wolf pup and then complain when an institution which is il equipped to parent a teen age girl does a horrible job at parenting a teenage girl . The  wolves most definitely would  not let the young wolf mother stay in a den by herself in a psychopath was after her. A psychopath that had a history of breaking into the homes of his previous girl friends and beating them within and inch of their lives. Wolves would have sniffed out this psychopath as a danger to the wolf cubs and the pregnant teen wolf and would have taken him out or driven him away.

Yes Aunt Mary, you are right, Jasmine CLEARLY was not raised by wolves. Wolves understand that their very survival is based on being able to care for those who are unable to care for themselves, the young and the vulnerable.

I can't imagine being 17 year's old trying to navigate "the system" thank God I had a FAMILY of ADULTS that made ADULT DECISIONS for me until I was competent to make them for myself and strong enough to recover from any poor choices I made.

You weren't expecting this response Aunt Mary because the POLITICALLY CORRECT thing to do would be let you slide by with your complaint about the State of Florida. You're right, the State of Florida sucks at raising children. In fact, occasionally they lose children like Rilya Wilson. That's why as long as there is a blood relative that's breathing, Heaven and Earth should be moved to avoid having a demonstrably incompetent entity raise children! You ought to be embarrassed to public ask "What about the state,they had a say as well".There is PLENTY of blame to go around in this case and Jasmine's "family" is certainly due its fair share.


Sincerely,

WAOD Minister of Chicanery and Foolishness

Jasmine doesn't need "credit" from a bunch of strangers on a blog, what she needed was serious help from her family, not the State. Now, the State of Florida may be the only entity with enough resources to help her at this point.

I'm not quite grasping how Jasmine has an aunt waging a public relations campaign on a blog, but Jasmine is still a ward of the State of Florida and apparently has spent YEARS in foster care. I would be embarrassed to come on a blog and claim some type of familial relationship with this child and then turn around and blame the State of Florida for being a bad parent. STATES MAKE HORRIBLE PARENTS that's why FAMILY should move heaven and earth to make sure the STATE is never in in loco parentis

I don't believe "Aunt Mary" for a freaking minute. If this child was in foster care for YEARS something ain't right in that family. Wolves my *$#@^#*! I'm not buying the whole "We don't know what happened" BS.  If Aunt Mary doesn't know what led this baby with a baby to hook up with this violent sociopath, I suggest somebody in that FAMILY, wolves or otherwise, get to stepping. Perhaps she ended up with him because she thought he would protect her. Maybe she was in fear of her crazy family. CLEARLY her "family" didn't protect her. How in the @^$!#@^%* do you let a 17 year old girl that got brutally beaten by a boyfriend to KICKED IN THE DOOR of her house return to the same apartment ALONE?

I am twice Jasmine's age and I don't know that I could bounce back from something this horrific. Jasmine has my deepest sympathies.

I hope that SOMEBODY in her orbit cares enough to fight for what is left of her life. You can start by acknowledging that it's not the State of Florida's job to care for and nurture a teen girl with LIVING blood relatives. Oh yeah, and here's a tidbit y'all are going to LOVE. The psychopath was in the birthing room when little Emanuel was born... HE CUT THE umbilical cord (watch the video). Somehow that fact just makes it worse for me. Why the heck didn't Aunt Mary cut the cord?

Suggested Reading:

Babies, Boyfriends and Bad Tempers

Comments

[JustMe]

Gina,

I thank you for having the courage to say what needed to be said. God knows I would've let Aunt Mary slide and been like... "Well -- we don't KNOW what happened!" You are truly a blessing for those who need tough LOVE! Wonder if they know that?

[Lorraine]

OMG Gina,

You told "Aunt Mary" right. There is nothing more that could be said. But you do know that you are dealing with a mentality here when someone says/claims such foolishness. After intensive therapy (and maturity) maybe Jasmine will speak out against this aunt and all other family members who stood by and did nothing while she languished in foster care. This is like other family members who know that children are being molested by their fathers or mother's boyfriend) and stand by and do NOTHING. They shake their heads shaming the perpetrator and forget about the crime that is being committed or tremendous impact that this horrible crime has on shaping these young lives. I know people like this who could have done something to stop the abuse if it was nothing more than an anonymous call to the local sherrif.

As much as I tried to understand the father in the video, I could not. I know that the majority of these families stand up for their loved ones who commit even heinous crimes where there is massive cruelty and loss of life (even the unibomber's family didn't want him comdemned to death, and even Aicha el-Wafi, the mother of accused Sept. 11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui stands by her son) but the arrogance and lack of remorse this Ricco character displays is too much. Well, Ricco Sr. really feels for the little baby, but he loves HIS child -- good or bad.

Thanks for posting and super shout out for your brilliant, common sense response.

[Naima]

The state care is always a bad deal. I think that activists while their heart may have been in the right place (or just trying to get more money) have somehow made a lot of black folks think its the state or governments job to correct even things that go on in folks personal life.
Some family member don't want the responsiblity of taking care another child, thats why some children services folks have to pop up at family members home in the evening to drop the kids off to kind of sneak up on them.
But maybe Aunt Mary has also been dealing with her own demons during this time. There are families out there that just don't have one aunt or uncle with substance abuse issues, all the kids may have had various substance abuse issues. You may have a mother who had five kids and only one is not a crackhead, especially during that whole 80s crack era.

[katrina]

Gem2001, your response to the 'aunt' was awesome. I am an aunt to a precious one year old and I would end up in jail for capital charges before I let anyone hurt him or his mother, who happens to be my sister.

We all know government is the worst when it comes to private matters so that aunt definitely looks stupid trying to pass some of the blame on to them.

I love your blog! You tell it like it is!

[Roslyn Holcomb]

The state makes lousy parents. That was our mantra when I was a social worker. Foster care itself is enough to make a child crazy, no matter what resources the state brings to bear.

If this child has living relatives who clearly have the aptitude to access the internet and wage a PR campaign, why in the name of all that's holy was this child in the system? It's inconceivable to me that this child has blood relatives and was left to the tender mercies of the state. Even the best child welfare system is not fit to raise children. I say that as someone who worked in the best system in this country for more than five years.

[Roslyn Holcomb]

You're right Naima. Oftentimes people would ask me why so many black kids remained in the system when white kids generally do not. Many times when you go looking for relatives, within a generation or so in the white families you would find someone who was reasonably stable and willing and able to take the child. This used to be true in AA families as well. However, in the past couple of generations or so, that has changed dramatically. Now you have multi-generational substance abuse and/or mental illness. Sometimes we were able to put enough support in place for the family so they'd be able to take the child anyway. This would range from repairing a car so they had transportation to take a child to school (or paying a neighbor to do it) to buying furniture or clothes for the child. Of course, now with the economic crisis those programs have been cut back and/or eliminated in their entirety. As a result, you'll have more kids in a system that even at its best is not fit for rearing children.

[chrissy snow]

LOVE your response to "Aunt Mary". As said, she is part of the bigger problem that goes deep into that family. They probably thought Jasmine had it made by having a man in her life at all. How sad that it took the death of her baby to finally get her some help.

Wait, the murderer is 22 - how old is HIS dad, 35 at most?? SMDH. Just so much wrong between everybody in the story.

[Lorraine]

Chrissy,

Yes, I noticed the father looked quite young himself which may tell you about his own parenting skills or lack thereof.

I know the protocol is to seek family to take children but their resources are sometimes limited and they may not be able to find a relative. But, I have a friend who just moved back to her hometown after a military career. She found out her cousin's 3 year-old was in foster care and without a moment's hesitation went to get him. She is now trying to adopt him. Their home town is full of other relatives. She wanted to move back to familiar surroundings and found out about her cousin just through a passing conversation. My friend took action because she could not bear to know that a blod relative was in the system when she had so much to offer. I realize my friend may not be the norm, but maybe distant relatives are the way to go with when the close ones are not reliable or available.

Then, when I see some families, foster care with a stranger which horribly may be the best option. Some blood families don't want to be involved.

[Roslyn Holcomb]

Distant relatives are sometimes the best option. I've shipped kids as far away as Korea and California to find blood relatives. It can be a time-consuming and arduous task, but study after study has shown that children do better with family (even if family is sometimes not ideal), than they do in the care of the state. There's an innate part of the human psyche that wants to be with its own.

[Golden Silence]

The father sounds like a moron. Too many slurred words and "yaknowwhaI'msayin" to understand. And yes, he does look like he's not that much older than his son.

I can't believe he's sitting there and saying how his son loved that baby like he were his own. BS. If he really loved that baby, he wouldn't have beaten him and thrown him out of a car.

[LaJane Galt]

gem~I2I. My thoughts: "if the State is who you are relying on, you've already failed."

chrissy~I was doing basic arithmetic in my head too. He seemed very distant and not really emotionally invested in his son.
***
Notice, he felt "sorry" for the "baby". Not "my grandson". He feels no love for the baby. Multi-generational pathology renders people hopeless. More and more, I support adopting kids out of those circumstances.

I bet if you asked him OTR, he'd say it wasn't his son's baby...

I read that link. (1) Child care is imperative (2) I think there is something hardwired into men that makes them (often) contemptuous of kids not their own.

[LD]

Amen Gina(standing oviation)!!!!

Ask for Aunt Mary, open your mind and heart, and seek some advice from the women and men at WAOD; b/c right now that young girl (Jasmine Bedwell) still needs the emotional and physical support of family and not solely the state of Florida.

[Golden Silence]

Another thing I wanted to add: I don't think "Aunt Mary" was defending Jasmine, I think she was defending herself. I cannot recall the number of times bad parents and families didn't give a care about their kids, but when called on it all hell broke loose. They don't want to be told they're failures. She's defending her own name, not Jasmine's.

[Sandra]

Co-sign that, Golden Silence. So often you see family not care enough to help while the person is living and having deep problems, but they're ready to show up and show out for a funeral or when they get called on the fact that they didn't lift a finger to help when they could have.

[pioneervalleywoman]

It very well might not have indeed been a real blood relative speaking about the situation, but somebody posing as one, and trying to stir something up.

The most important thing is that the person presented a mindset which needed to be challenged, one which too many people seem to adhere to, and you did a fantastic job!

[deborah]

Not only does the state do a bad job of raising children, it does a bad job of protecting women (of all ages) from violent men.

Abusive people are amazingly persistent. Only extreme (that is, physically disabling) violence to their person or their removal from the victim really stops them.

I don't know how this 17 year old girl could have been expected to defend her child or herself from a violent abuser.

Sad beyond words.

[Wanna Twinkie]

Yes Gina wolves would have done a better job and as for Aunt Mary, she is just trying to save face..a lil late for that now don't you think???

Guilty conscience much Aunt Mary???
Amazing response!

[attorneymom]

Coming soon: www.punkazzparents.com (The Blog Where Family Matters)

Join The Alliance Aganist Punk Azz Parents.

[Ms P]

Amen, Amen, Amen. Where was this aunt when these poor babies (mother & child) needed help? Wolves truly would have been a better family for her.