In less than a month, South Florida has witnessed three horrific cases of child abuse and homicide that have police and abuse workers shocked.
First came the case of the Barahona twins, both abused with 10-year-old Nubia murdered, stuffed in a plastic bag, found in the back of her adoptive father's pick up on Valentine's Day. On the front seat, her brother Victor, doused in chemicals, now lucky to be alive.
Adoptive parents Carmen and Jorge Barahona are charged with murder and abuse.
Then the case of two children, a brother and sister found floating in a lake in Delray Beach. Their mother's boyfriend has been charged, after mom was found buried in a dump.
In Hialeah this week, Vincent Collins and his girlfriend Savanah Sholter were arrested for abusing their young child. The two year old boy, weighing just 15 pounds, was found covered in feces in a littered motel room. A dead animal also found in the room.
The question now is what motivates people to do such horrible things to their children? Even hardened cops are amazed.
Referring to the case of Nubia Barahona and her brother, Jim Loftus, the Director of the Miami-Dade Police Department said, "This is, in my experience, one of the saddest commentaries on the human condition that I've ever seen, it is depressing, it's sickening to think about the circumstances that led to people, working in concert, to perpetrate this kind of horror on their own children, adopted or not."
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Jennifer O'Flannery Anderson heads the Broward United Way, which funds programs to prevent child abuse blames much of the violence on the break down of the family unit.
"A lot of it comes from their (the victim's) parents, the environment they came up in that is so unhealthy that it becomes natural to them. They saw it done so they think that is how they treat their children," said Anderson. "We are dealing with a break down of multiple generations of the eroding family, young families, parents who were not raised in healthy environments, did not have good modeling."
O'Flannery Anderson was not speaking specifically about the recent cases, but was quick to note that many of the abuse cases can be traced to substance abuse and mental issues.
"Twenty years ago, what happened behind closed doors was a private matter," she said. "Today we know that effect of that was they have created a generation of people who abuse their children or abuse their spouses."
Follow Hank Tester on Twitter at @wtvjreporter.
