• You must be logged in to see or use the Shoutbox. Besides, if you haven't registered, you really should. It's quick and it will make your life a little better. Trust me. So just register and make yourself at home with like-minded individuals who share either your morbid curiousity or sense of gallows humor.

Pennsylvania Boy, 7, Forced To live in Basement and Sleep in Coffin

According to The Times-Tribune archives, Ms. Gardner was brought up on harassment charges in 2004 after she repeatedly blasted music with racially tinged lyrics from her trailer in Scott Twp. toward the home of the Gogases, a Puerto Rican family next door.

"She had put a speaker in the back door and blasted the music for hours," said Ms. Gogas, at whose home Ms. Gardner, then Lori Green, directed the music. "It kept going over the lyrics about how it was going to eradicate me, destroy me, my people."

Ms. Gogas - who had been the target of a lawsuit filed by Ms. Gardner's father, Robert Green - said the two families had a history of problems when, in 2004, Ms. Gardner began blasting the song "Conflict" by the band Disturbed from her trailer, decked out with a confederate flag hanging in the window.
Click to expand...

She was obviously blasting the music to offend her neighbors but the song Conflict isn't racially tinged like the article states. It's a song meant to make people look at themselves before pointing the finger at someone else and discourages fighting against your enemies. Don't take your anger out on your "enemy", because you are an enemy yourself.

I would love for my neighbors to blast that song.
 
I don't see anything wrong with the cop asking why the boy was crying...they didn't know he had been locked in a basement or abused at that point. They found a kid crying and inquired as to why, what's wrong with that? If I walked into a house a found a crying kid the first thing I would ask is why.
 
I'm surprised this has raised so much comment. When a news story, or even a blog, discusses the fact that adults asked a child about their emotional state, it lacks an entire realm of context. That officer was probably not saying, "hey, why you crying? Nothing is going to happen to you. You're fine." The officer was probably trying to get the kid's story. Something more like, "hey, why are you crying? What did they do to you?"

Maybe what is happening here is our own experiences of childhood, when adults used to pick us up and put us back on our feet -- then try to get us to be quiet by making it all out to be nothing, whether we fell on our faces or someone twice our size slugged us in the nose. We hear an inflection that is not necessarily there and it colors our reactions.
 
Tundratot said:
I'm surprised this has raised so much comment.
Click to expand...

I'm surprised, too. I was just tossing out a thank you, Captain Obvious joke. It wasn't intended to be anything else.

It's my first reaction to ask "what's wrong?" as opposed to "why are you crying?" In this case, they would be equally Captain Obvious.
 
My oldest is 7 and oh, wow, how the imagination runs wild.
This kid was put in a coffin in dark, dank, disgusting place with things crawling about, my god, they gave him a personal nightmare! When I saw their pictures all I wanted to do was punch them both and shove them down the basement lock the door solid.
They are mean SOB's, bullies, heartless fucks with no care but for themselves.

I hope that child never has to set put in the same place with them, breath the air they expel and make fetid.

Heal, be loved and never fear the dark little one. The monsters are out in the light of day, you can see pictures of them on the net.
 
A 2012 update says the charges against the mother were dropped.

Charges were dismissed against a Scranton woman accused of locking her seven-year-old son in a coffin.

The judge dismissed all charges against Lori Gardner because of insufficient evidence.

However, the court is still charging Gardner’s boyfriend, Brian Sleboda, with endangering the welfare of a child.

In September, 2011, Gardner and Sleboda were accused of putting the boy in the basement of their Raines Street home and locking him there to punish him. Sleboda also allegedly put a diaper on the boy and locked him in a coffin in the basement.

The district attorney plans to appeal the ruling.
Click to expand...
http://wnep.com/2012/07/14/charges-dismissed-against-scranton-woman/
It does not seem that the case was refiled.

The only information on Sleboda is here
http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Superior/out/J-A11032-13m - 1014481511619728.pdf
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Latest posts

Back
Top