Some parents may raise their children with vodka

A 24-year-old woman is expecting a trial in Russia's Ulyanovsk region. The woman killed her three-month-old baby, adding vodka to his formula. The woman said that she was adding vodka to calm the crying baby boy down. The defendant's family was known for being not a "favorable" one, but no one was interested in the alcoholics until the tragedy occurred.

The sad story started, or, to be more precise, ended on June 14, 2010. A newborn baby boy was delivered to the intensive care unit of the Central District Hospital from the town of Elita, the Ulyanovsk region. The boy died soon afterwards over severe toxicoses.

It became known later that the boy had fallen ill several days before his hospitalization. His mother, Natalia Sizova, decided not to ask for medical help. She assumed the boy would get well if she added some vodka to his formula. The baby did not feel better, of course, but he started to cry less.

More details about the family began to appear during investigation. It was said that the boy's father had a criminal record a served a prison term. The boy's mother was an alcoholic. The family was living in unsanitary conditions, and the parents did not make any hygienic exceptions for the baby. They would feed him from dirty plates with bad quality food.

Social agencies paid attention to the family only after the baby boy died. This seems to be a rule in their routine work.

Last year, a 28-year-old woman in Bashkiria decided that she could cure her son's cold (the boy was only two months old) with the help of a mixture of vodka, vinegar and water. The baby died after several days of such treatment.

As it turned out, the woman did not take her child to the doctor because she had already been deprived of parental rights for the first child. She apparently thought that she would lose her other baby too.

Another tragedy took place at the end of January in the town of Demidov, the Smolensk region. The 24-year-old mother of three went to see her friends and left the children home alone. The oldest of the children was seven. The woman came back only three days later. The children were completely abandoned for three days; no one was taking care of them. The youngest child died, the two others were hospitalized.

Children's ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said in an interview with Rossiiskay Gazeta that parents may correct their mistakes if they had not committed a crime against their child.

"I firmly believe that even criminals may have an opportunity to correct their mistakes, albeit with the use of different methods, of course. If a mother commits a crime against her child, she will have to go through a very complicated process of rehabilitation. She will have to prove that she will not harm her children again. There are good parents, and there are bad parents, but they all are parents. Not only do parents hold certain rights towards their children, they incur obligations to their children," Astakhov said.

Ksenia Obraztsova
Pravda.Ru

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