Childhood is supposed to be the most memorable, joyful, cheerful, easiest time anybody can experience in a lifetime.
In a healthy average family in an ideal world, children get all the love and attention they could need from everyone around.
They have all the chances to play and wander just about anywhere without a care in the world, yet still are kept safe from any harm by the family.
But this is not an ideal world. Child abuse, even in the developed world, is not exceptionally uncommon.
In the United States alone, there are more than 3 million reports of child abuse every year where victims are sexually assaulted, physically and psychologically maltreated, neglected or any combination of those.
One of the most horrifying cases of child abuse in the United States was inflicted upon Adrian Jones, whose father and stepmother put the little boy under constant nefarious torture that ultimately ended his life at the tender age of seven.
Records show the nightmare began when Adrian was aged five, maybe younger, when the family resided in Clinton County, Missouri, and continued after moving to Wyandotte County, Kansas.
10 /10 The Family
Adrian Jones had five siblings. He was the fifth of six children born to Dianna Pearce. By many accounts, Dianna was a terrible absentee mother.
Kiki, Adrian’s oldest sister, wrote in an online letter that their mother had not necessarily known how to be a mother; sometimes, she would go out to the grocery store and did not come back until the next day.
In 2012, the Kansas Department for Children and Families removed the children from the mother’s house after finding out they had been left unsupervised. They were subsequently placed in the custody of the father, Michael Jones.
9 /10 Unaddressed Reports Of Abuse
About a year later, a Missouri Children’s Division worker visited the 5-year-old Adrian Jones after receiving an anonymous call about child abuse concerns.
The boy informed the child services that his father and stepmother had been violent to him.
Adrian described how their father, Michael Jones, and stepmother, Heather, had punched him in the stomach, pulled his ears, and hit him in the head until a bit of bone came out.
However, there was never a request to pick him up; he remained with the abusive couple because officials failed to either see or recognize signs of physical abuse.