The Morvant woman who featured in a Facebook post beating her son with a shovel should not be jailed but given counselling. This is according to one of her neighbours who spoke with the media outside her Lower Morvant Extension home yesterday. The neighbour, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the mother of three is a frustrated woman who grew up with that sort of discipline and was merely passing on to her children what was taught to her by her mother.
“Right now she is really frustrated. From what I saw there that is really a frustrated woman. I never hear them beating the children, the grandmother does beat them like that still. Somebody has to help them. She is in a very dark place because that shovel could have killed that child. Even if you jail her what would happen to the children? The grandmother would raise them? The same one who raised her?” the woman asked.
She added that last year before Christmas she spoke with the 13-year-old child who was beaten in the video. She said he told her that he loved his mother and that she was really trying. “She need the help because the world saw her. That was passed to her by her mother. It come out because the poor children need saving,” the woman said.
“When I saw that video I couldn’t believe it was that little boy. I was very surprised to see it was her. He never used to curse or anything. I know she has an aggressive way of yelling at them and cursing them—that is the way she knows. Some people say she big and she should know better. She need guidance too. She is passing on to her children what her parents passed on to her...You could see she trying with them.”
The suspect, accompanied by her attorney Orrin Kerr, yesterday gave a statement at the Morvant Police Station. The woman spent close to 45 minutes in the police station hiding from media photographers who were stationed outside.