Schatz couple in court today

Schatz couple in court today

Posted: 05/25/2010 01:00:00 AM PDT

A Paradise couple accused of beating their 7-year-old adopted daughter to death will be in court this morning for a scheduled preliminary hearing.

Kevin and Elizabeth Schatz face one count of murder, one count of torture and one count of child abuse. The torture count alleges that the parents beat their 11-year-old adopted daughter so severely she ended up in the hospital with kidney failure. The child abuse charge is for bruising authorities reportedly found on the couple’s 10-year-old biological son.

The Schatzes are parents to six biological children and three they adopted from Liberia about three years ago. Seven-year-old adopted daughter Lydia died of blunt force trauma in February. According to authorities, she was beaten for several hours with a quarter-inch plumbing supply line as her parents took turns holding her down and using the instrument. The blows reportedly cause Rhabdomyolysis, which is a breakdown of muscle tissue which fatally damaged her vital organs. The 11-year-old was allegedly beaten in a similar manner the previous night.

According to Butte County District Attorney Mike Ramsey, the parents appeared to be following the methods of Michael and Debi Pearl, founders of a controversial fundamentalist religious group, No Greater Joy Ministries.

They also wrote a controversial parenting book “To Train Up a Child.” In their literature, the Pearls encourage parents to use a quarter-inch plumbing supply line (or other items like rulers, paddles or tree branches) as a “rod” to “train up” their children. Though they tell parents not to injure their children, they also encourage constant “switching” or “licks” for not only disobedience but also for things like spilling nuts or being foolish. Additional “licks” are recommended when the child cries out.

According to local authorities, Lydia’s “biblical chastisement” leading to her death may have been for mispronouncing a word during a home-school reading lesson. The Schatzes entered not guilty pleas to all charges in March. Kevin Schatz will be represented by Defense Attorney Michael Harvey while Elizabeth Schatz will be represented by Defense Attorney Kevin Sears.

The preliminary hearing allows the judge to hear evidence against the defendants from the prosecutors and witnesses as well as arguments and cross examination from the defense attorneys. The judge then determines if the case will proceed to trial. According to Ramsey, however, it appears likely that the preliminary hearing will be waived today and the case will proceed.
Both defendants are being held in the Butte County Jail on bail of $2 million each. Both face two life terms in state prison if convicted.

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(wtf!!)

No Greater Joy Ministries.

Indeed eh?

im no parent, but i can barely formulate a response without swearing profusely. this is the kind of childhood that a lot of kids are still subject to, especially in afrikaans homes. where this whole ‘a child is to be seen and not heard’ thing is still abound. children are to have no self-will, no emotion, and just be droids. god help you if you step outside that. no wonder im a rebel. and no wonder kids blixem off the bandwagon the moment they taste freedom.
my partner comes from an english home, where kids were treated as equals, not slaves and mindless animals. helluva difference there mate!!

and ofcourse, the bible recons, blixem your kid, yoru wife, your slave, and who the hell else you want. erm, the bible is a bit outdated. slavery and wife-beating has been abolished, how bout not beating your kid?
as much as a solid thump on the ass is needed with a kid on occasion, im sure if parents were equipped with the right tools, there are a myriad of ways of getting around that too.

Sowi, wanted to reply earlier, every time I get online connection get lost between my Laptop and modem. >:(

GG not only do people go to the extremes of killing or almost killing their children, they just seem to
not be able to find a fair medium or balance in parenting their kids. For me it seem like either they
want to kill them or they just let them be and teach them no life lesson! (Like in the situation above, they blixem over to the wrong side yet again)

If in a situation where a child must be punished and one parent lose his temper badly, it is the duty of the other parent to protect the child, because adults seem to forget to often, that they are dealing with a child. They conveniently forget that they too were children once and done the same things. They should rather think back on how they were punished as a child, what they themselves felt as a child and if that was really the appropriate way their own parents handled the situation.

Many of us come out of freakin strict households, where you got punished for accidently dropping a glass or fell out of a tree because we explored as children. Without any explanation you had a hell of a hiding. Now we know, by communicating the dangers or explaining situations to our children even at early stages, will hopefully make them think before they attempt it again. Parents cause their own shite, by giving a child an answer like “because or sommer” and I truly hope this is not still the way lazy parents handle situations!

i have, unfortunately, either enherited or learnt my dad’s terrible short temper. of which i was often the on the receiving end of. i remember being slapped in the face when i was very little, and beated purple coz i wouldnt let him pull one of my teeth. allso being beating till my ass bleeds coz i forgot to let a lizzard out of a pot where i had caught it.
long story short, i ended up with the same short fuse. so i know that i will never have kids. i have chilled out plenty, coz i had to look myself in the mirror after i lost it with a pet.
now my pets are my kids, and they are treated like gold, and get away with pretty much anything.
maybe in spite of this, or because of it, i cant stand kids, i have no motherly instincts at all.
my sister too, inherited this temper, and she often has to go for a long drive in order not to smash her kids head into the wall. she has been in tears confessing to me how she had wanted to throw him against the wall.
i dont want to have to deal with that shit thanx.

so, i think, that one should be able to realise, that if you arent going to make a decent, attentive, responseable parent, able and willing to improve upon what has been tought to you, then you should just get neutered, and get it over with.

True, only problem is, so many people have kids, come hell or high water cause of “duty” either to their religion or partners! That’s when the paw-paw hits the fan! I myself had a kid at a young age, but I must say I had more patience with the second. In my opinion women should only have kids after 30. I really dono how the heck people in history coped having kids whilst they themselves were also still kids at age 12, 13, 14 perhaps maltreatment was in the order of the day!

i think, back in the day, kids had to grow up lank fast. barely any schooling, if at all. as soon as they can walk, they work.
hard times. the average life-span in the middle-ages was like 35, so you had to start squeezing out puppies asap.
i was pregnant about two years ago, coz someone who shall not be mentioned, didnt like effies.
anyhows, i had an abortion at three weeks. i couldnt put that child thru having to deal with me being broke, or heaven forbid, being adopted by my sister.
but, i have my genetic material cruizing around in two born babies, and one in utero. so at least my DNA is going around. poor bastards.