Family Dog Helps Parents Expose Their Child's Abusive Babysitter

woensdag 11 september 2013

AppId is over the quota
AppId is over the quota
by Lisa Fogarty 2 hours ago

Shortly after relocating to Charleston last year, Benjamin and Hope Jordan searched high and low for a reliable babysitter for their then 7-month-old son Finn. Like many parents, they were probably filled with an anxiety that ceased slightly when the background check for their potential sitter, 22-year-old Alexis Khan, came out clean as a whistle. 

But Khan wasn't fooling their family dog.

"About five months into her being our babysitter, we started to notice that our dog was very defensive of our son when she would come in the door," said Benjamin Jordan. "He was very aggressive towards her and a few times we actually had to physically restrain our dog from going towards her." 

Suspicious, the Jordan's placed an iPhone under their couch to record the sitter with Finn while they were at work. What they heard later that day devastated them. 

Khan was caught on tape cussing at the baby. The curses soon turned to slapping noises and Finn's cries could be heard changing from distress to pain. 

Is your blood boiling yet? Can you even imagine how you would feel? 

"I just wanted to reach through the audio tape, go back in time, and just grab him up," Jordan said. "To know that five months I had handed my child to a monster, not knowing what was going on in my house for that day."

The good news -- the only good news to come from this sad story, other than the fact that the Jordans can take solace in the fact that they have one amazing pooch -- is that Khan was arrested, confessed to the abuse, and was sentenced this week to serve one to three years in prison. 

As part of her plea, Khan will be placed on a child abuse registry, which is the least that the courts could do after what this child and these poor parents went through. She actually qualifies for parole in one year -- which seems ludicrous to me.

I understand a punishment has to fit a crime and that I am especially sensitive to and passionate about this issue because I have a toddler, but is one year really enough time for this crazy woman to learn the lesson that she has no right to put her hands on someone else's child? She could have chosen any other part-time job -- why choose one that required her to be a loving caretaker? 

Do you think Khan's sentence is fair? 

Image via State Farm/Flickr

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Lisa Fogarty

Lisa Fogarty is a former old-timey print journalist who lives in Brooklyn with her husband and toddler girl. She still carries a notebook everywhere and is always on the lookout for tasty vegan food and blouses with collars that will finally put the Peter Pan out on its (adorable) tush.

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Demi Lovato Chides Miley Cyrus About Partying, Because THAT Always Helps

woensdag 24 juli 2013

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AppId is over the quota
by Linda Sharps 3 hours ago

If you've been feeling a little worried about Miley Cyrus and her hard-partying ways, you have a kindred soul in Demi Lovato. Lovato, who met Cyrus on the set of Hannah Montana six years ago, isn't too sure about her friend's laissez-faire approach to twerking her way through life while gleefully admitting she's often too baked to know what she's talking about.

The things is, I'm not too sure Lovato's decision to share her motherly concern about Miley Cyrus via MTV News was the best way to show her support. Nor am I confident Miley's exactly open to criticism from someone who's basically become the poster child for stone cold sobriety.

I have all sorts of admiration for Demi Lovato's ongoing honesty about the crap she's gone through in recent years. She's battled an eating disorder, self-injury, suicidal feelings (which started when she was just 7 years old), bipolar disorder, self-medicating with drugs and alcohol, and judging by the lyrics in her song "Warrior," sexual abuse.

It's not surprising that she's no longer on the same wavelength as wild child Miley, which Lovato confessed to MTV News:

She knows how I feel about the whole partying thing. I love her to death and I'm always like, 'Just be careful' and she's like, 'Dude, I'm chilling. It's fine.' But I care for her so much that I'm so protective, but she's good. She's got a good head on her shoulders.

I believe that Lovato cares for her friend, but it seems like kind of a weird move to publicly share that you disapprove of someone's partying. Plus, her follow-up comments about Miley's party anthem "We Can't Stop" sound downright passive-aggressive:

I think it's a good song... It's a song a lot of people have fun to and if people are enjoying it, then great.

Translation: Look, if people like an inappropriate song that references "dancing with Molly," it's their funeral. Have fun getting addicted to ecstasy, everyone.

Okay, that might not be entirely fair, but I imagine that it's just kind of hard for Lovato to be asked about her pop-star peers when she feels like she's in such a different place. As she said of her friends Cyrus and Selena Gomez turning 21,

They can turn 21 and have their turn-21st-birthday. I don't think that I – I just don't put myself in those situations where I'm going to be at those 21st birthdays. I don't go to clubs. I just know it's something I can't do without being triggered. And that's okay.

Sobriety is hard enough when you're years past the partying stage, being just twenty and living the celebrity lifestyle must put Lovato in a state of constant vigilance. It's got to be hard as hell, and sometimes a certain sense of evangelicalism is the only way to get past all those temptations.

But for the people who are enjoying their less-than-perfectly-responsible years, I'm sure it's equally hard to hear the criticism. More power to Lovato for wanting to protect her buddy and all, but it seems like she'd do better to keep her concerns a little more private.

What do you think about Demi Lovato calling Miley Cyrus out for partying? Do you think it crossed a friendship line?

Image via Splash News

Click the "Like" button below to get Linda Sharps's stories on Facebook. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Linda Sharps

lives in Eugene, Oregon with her family, where she works from home while wrangling two rambunctious boys. She always has a caffeinated beverage in hand and a LEGO embedded in her foot.

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