There have been several such cases in the North Texas area in recent years. It defys imagination how people can treat their children this way, except as Azizi says, if you've been around child protective services folks (my mother was an MSW working in that department in Washington State) then you'd be totally depressed at the state of many of the homes where workers are called out to check on children. So many slip through those administrative cracks (the most frequent ones being children returned to monsterous parents or caseworkers ignoring pleas from neighbors to intervene).

SRS