Parents around the nation shake their heads upon hearing a story about a mother killing her child — or allowing a partner to kill a precious baby. How does someone’s life devolve into this kind of evil?
Candlelight vigils for kids are too common in America today. Mental health issues, the desperation that accompanies poverty, and simple evil claim too many young lives — some at the hands of the one person who should be ready to lay down her life for theirs.
“You can close your eyes and see those faces for the rest of your life,” one prosecutor said of the victims.
“Society increasingly de-values human life — even the lives of children,” former high school teacher and Maryland grandmother Jean Primm told LifeZette. “Children are raised by parents too busy for them, and they are assigned reading rife with sexual content in public schools, which kills their innocence. Legalized abortion tells a society, ‘That child only has worth if you say it has worth.’ When God’s laws are mocked, chaos reigns.”
Just this past Monday in Indiana, two children were found dead in the back seat of their mother’s car, hours after an Amber Alert had been issued for them.
An officer from the Elkhart Police Department was stopped by 29-year-old Amber Pasztor — the non-custodial parent of Liliana Hernandez, 7, and Rene Pasztor, 6, in the early evening, according to local news station Fox 59. She told the officer her two children were dead in the back of her car, a 1999 Mercury Mystique. Police arrested her on two counts of murder.
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“I can tell you from personal experience, some of the worst things that I’ve ever seen in my life — and I can still close my eyes and see — is the death of any child,” Allen County prosecutor Karen Richards told Fox 59. “When you find children, it’s usually law enforcement that walks in on that scene … You can close your eyes and see those faces for the rest of your life.”
In August, Americans were stunned by a story out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. A young girl was drugged, raped, murdered, and dismembered by two convicted criminals who had gotten involved with the girl’s mother — and the mother was present at her death.
Michelle Martens, the mom of the 10-year-old, as well as her boyfriend, Fabian Gonzales, and his cousin, Jessica Kelley, are all currently in jail; they were unable to put up a $1 million bail. Each faces child abuse, kidnapping, murder, and evidence tampering charges in connection with the killing of young Victoria Martens.
“Mothers are to protect their children, period,” said a clinical psychologist. “Often these women who pair up with evil men don’t feel whole without a man.”
Martens was found dead by police in the apartment the day she was to celebrate her 10th birthday. Authorities say her remains had been wrapped in a blanket and set on fire in a bathtub.
Neighbors described the girl as happy and outgoing; she seemed well cared-for. Martens worked at a grocery store near the apartment complex with a community pool. Her daughter was often seen swimming there.
“Mothers are to protect their children, period,” clinical psychologist Shoshana Bennett of Orange County, California, told LifeZette. “To generalize, often these women who pair up with evil men don’t feel whole without a man, so they would rather be with any man at all rather than be by themselves.”
She added, “These men are predators and can attract confused, vulnerable women. It’s a perfect storm: She’s desperate to be with someone, he looks for that kind of woman — with or without a child. She can be controlled. The child is secondary and gets caught in this horrible mix.”
In Memphis, Tennessee, this past July, sheriff’s deputies found a large butcher knife covered in what appeared to be blood in an apartment where a mother killed her four children, cutting their throats, according to CBS News. Shanynthia Gardner, 29, was charged with four counts of first-degree murder while committing aggravated child neglect in the deaths of her three daughters and one son. Her children were all under age five.
The woman’s husband told police she was having problems at work and was feeling anxious, The Commercial Appeal reported — and “she also has been feeling that someone was trying to harm her and her family.”
Often, some jail time alone shocks a murderous mom into the reality of what she has done.
“Sometimes it takes that type of isolation for her to come to her senses,” said Bennett. “The woman realizes she alone was responsible for those she put in contact with her child. She should have protected that child above anything — even her own needs. That is often the problem. The mothers are blinded by their own emotional insecurities.”
In Bennett’s words lie a sad reality — and a path forward for any woman willing to walk it.
“It is so much healthier to work on your own confidence and worth by yourself, as opposed to connecting with a no-good man,” she said.
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