16 Siders Kids: Why Your Mind Refuses To See Families Like This

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Dre.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
The Sider family got caught because of a random misdemeanor warrant because dad couldn't keep his pants on around the neighbors, allegedly. That's it. That's the entire safety net that worked. The store employees noticed, the neighbors were feet away, nobody called. And here's the uncomfortable premise. Psychotherapist Shavaun Scott is here to walk us through this case is not rare. Families like this exist in every state, every county, seen and unseen at the same time. This next part here is about the psychology of everyone on the outside, why we notice and do nothing, and how many of these houses we've walked past. Is it really that though, is it really that we say we do nothing or is it more so societal because we know if we say something, we see something, we say something, nothing happens.
That seems to be more of what it is. Then why expose ourselves? Why waste the time? Why do this when you report it and it goes absolutely nowhere? A lot of attention being brought on the people who saw them at the Dollar General or here or there.
Do the people who saw these folks and smelled them and felt the despair and saw those kids. When I see kids like this at the store, it's heartbreaking. My immediate reaction is they're effed. They are completely effed if these are the parents that they have. But I know there's absolutely nothing I can do by walking past them at the Dollar General or the Walmart or wherever that will help these kids or save these kids from the absolute shit, horrible decision-making mutant parents that they have.
That seems to be the reality that we live in is, we like to pretend we're saying something and seeing something and doing something, but the doing something is the part that never really goes on. Or if it does, it's very half-assed, and then the system is designed to put the kids back with abusers. That seems to be our problem here. We have no place to put them. So the convenient thing is, well, let's just try and hope to God mom and dad change their ways, and they never do, and it's just cycle, and it just goes on and on and on and on.

**Shavaun Scott** (2:28)
The person I'd like to have a conversation with is the obstetrician. She gave birth in the hospital. First thing when I heard the story, I thought she must have had all these babies at home, but she gave birth in the hospital. If you're an obstetrician and you have a young woman in her 20s, early 30s, and you're saying how many births have you had, this is your 13th, your 14th, your 15th, don't you ask some questions at that point. This is so far out of the normal of human behavior.
I guess that this is a hospital that was too small to have a funded social work position. But isn't this a family where even at that level, at the medical level, people would have been alarmed and been looking at this closely and asking questions. And it doesn't seem like that happened.

**Tony Brueski** (3:20)
But is there, I guess my question to you, is there anything that they could have done? I mean, I would have to guess that after all these births in this hospital, that people on the side are like, oh my God, she's back again.
And there's chatter amongst like, oh, this is, and there's chatter, but is there truly anything that they could have done? I don't know the answer to that.

**Shavaun Scott** (3:49)
I like to think in a functional public health system, which is-

**Tony Brueski** (3:53)
In a functional public health system?

**Shavaun Scott** (3:54)
In a functional public health system.

**Tony Brueski** (3:56)
Yes.

**Shavaun Scott** (3:57)
And I have-

**Robin Drake** (3:58)
The word functional.

**Shavaun Scott** (3:59)
Right, I have seen this happen at some times. If there's a family where there are questions, where there are concerns, you don't even necessarily need to open a CPS file, but you can make a request that a public health nurse can go out to the home and check on the family. You know, how is mom doing postpartum? And I think, you know, when we're looking at systemic changes, why doesn't that happen with every birth, where there's just a follow-up visit from a public health nurse a few months down- weeks or months down the road. How is everybody doing? You know, you would catch postpartum depression that way. You could catch people who are, you know, inadequately nourished.