Two boys who ran away from home and made their way to a medical center alleged they were beaten by their mother with a computer cable and denied food while she ate in front of them.
Houston police rescued the boys, aged 14 and 10 after they ran away from home to escape their mother’s abuse in July 2018 and are now with relatives.
Their mother, Annette Bogany, 53 is charged with multiple felonies for “whipping her sons with cables and denying them food to the point it left them with physical and mental scars,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said on April 5.
“The evidence shows that these boys were physically and mentally tortured by the person they should have been able to trust the most,” she said.
Harris Country authorities said the boys were thin because of food deprivation and had scars on their bodies showing evidence of long-term abuse.
The boys said they were beaten up for eating and their mother often ate in front of them while they went without food. The olden boy said they were once beaten up for grabbing a snack without permission. Another time he was beaten so hard that it left blood dripping from his head on the floor.
The older brother shielded his younger brother from his mother’s beatings by jumping in front of him.
When the boys escaped from their mother, they took their belongings in a pillowcase, including a computer cable that had been used to whip them.
“Child abuse is a huge problem and we take it very seriously,” Assistant District Attorney Lacy Johnson, who is prosecuting the case said in the statement. “We are following the evidence and will hold these abusers accountable.”
Disciplining Children
Most Americans hit their children at times and don’t consider it necessarily wrong, said a Brookings report.More than 70 percent of parents in the country agreed in 2012 that “it is sometimes necessary to discipline a child with a good, hard spanking.”
Most parents used such discipline for altering children’s behavior and were not aware of the long term impact of hitting children.
Brookings’ reported that parental beatings can lead to mental health problems such as anxiety and depression or alcohol and drug abuse.
“There is also robust evidence of an increased incidence of aggression among children who are regularly spanked,” the report said.
Corporal punishment can also lead to decreased cognitive abilities in early childhood, slower skill development, and other behavioral problems.
