An eight-year old boy in Ohio died last week of treatable Hodgkin's Lymphoma after his parents failed to take him to a doctor after over a year of illness and complaints. "It hurts mommy," Willie Robinson's aunt says she heard him say. But he received no diagnosis until a coroner found the disease after his death.
Although the boy's parents have five other children from six to fifteen years old, and although Child Protective Services were working with the family, (the aunt alerted them when her sister refused to see a doctor about a lump on Willie's neck in April 2007), they say they never noticed a sick child. They claim to have found the family "cooperative," in spite of the fact that the parents repeatedly failed to follow up on requests from CPS to take the children for doctor's appointments or to enroll them in school.
What's baffling to me about this case is that the family in question seems to have no particular reason for this level of neglect. There is no religious conviction mentioned, and while the story says CPS asked the parents to enroll their children in school, there's no indication that the family were home schooling or had any particular philosophy to guide them. They just didn't school their children and didn't take them to the doctor.
I'll be curious to see how the case unravels. There is no mention of the children's father in any of the reporting I've found. But the mother of the children is facing homicide charges and may go to jail for the death of her son.
SEE ALSO:
Update: Parents in Jail
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