Larry says, "When was the last time a woman slapped a child leaving no injury definable by any forensic methods and it was national news for a week... please folks open your eyes!"

Larry, with all due respect, I think you need to open your own eyes.

First of all, the story was "national news for a week" because there was a warrant out for Toogood's arrest for a week while she fled halfway across the nation, hiding a child whom the authorities feared had been seriously physically injured, and trying to disguise the child by dyeing and cutting her hair. "The fact that she returned to Indiana quickly when she could have been away until the intial furror passed" could also mean that she realized that it was pointless to keep running away when the entire country was on the lookout for her.

Secondly, as was evident on the videotape and as I and others on this thread have pointed out repeatedly, this was far more than a woman slapping a child. Yes, indeed, it was a "bad slapping" and there was shoving, but there was also hair-pulling, shaking and – using Toogood's own term – repeatedly "knocking" on her daughter's forehead. Now, knocking involves a closed fist, just as punching does, so whether Toogood actually meant that she was knocking as if on a door or using the term as a euphemism for punching (as in the term "knocking someone's block off" by punching them), she still is admitting laying a fist on her child and not just an open hand. I am as distressed as Jerry at your apparent downplaying of the abuse that child received that day.

Thirdly, that child was not examined by the doctor in new Jersey for nearly a week (if not exactly a week) after the incident of abuse, NOT the next day as you'd claimed in part 1 of this thread. I'm disturbed to see that you haven't got that fact straight, and I'm afraid you're blinding yourself to the fact that any bruises the child might have sustained could have healed before she was examined. Furthermore, as I stated before, there is psychological injury inflicted by abuse even if physical injury is not evident, and I don't see you even acknowledging that fact.

I can't imagine what you could possibly have to bring to the case that would be exculpatory, when there is simply no excuse for treating one's own child the way Toogood treated her daughter on September 13th when she struck the child, and afterward when she removed the child from her home and community and tried to hide her from the world. How can you tolerate that sort of isolation of the child from her siblings, her father and her culture while objecting to a temporary, supervised foster-care placement???