Michaela Watkins
Herald-Leader reporter Ashlee Clark is covering the trial of Patrick and Joy Watkins, the couple accused of beating and killing 10-year-old Michaela Watkins. Ashlee will send updates throughout the trial, so check here for live coverage. (Read Clark’s coverage of Monday’s trial here. Read previous entries at http://twitter.com/bluegrassbeat)
Live Updates
Sounds like the defense is going with the “I did it but I didn’t do it” strategy.
I am totally disgusted at the article in today’s Herald-Leader. This is a 10-year old little girl who was tortured and abused her entire life! To publish her problems is a disgrace! This child had no choice but to live a troubled life. Let’s talk about the abuse. For God’s sake! This child was burned and beaten to death. Take a good, close look at the picture of her in the newspaper. It appears to me she has a swollen lip in the posed picture. Sickening! These two so-called parents should rot in jail! Beat the hell out of them first and burn them.
I’m sorry but why is the jury taking so long? Deliberations should have been no more than an hour on this case. It is very obvious what happened here. I hope they get the maximum punishment.
Wow…that’s shocking! She had behavioral problems! Maybe it has to do with the fact that the social service people are about as capable as a box of rocks and couldn’t follow through on THE ONE THING THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO DO, PROTECT A CHILD FROM ABUSE! This story makes me want to puke.
Life in prison is too good for these low life individuals. They need to be treated just as Michaela was. Scald them with hot water and hit them with a table leg then take them to Red River Gorge and make them walk around all day. The Social Services people need to be fired and barred from ever working near children again. They were assigned the JOB of protecting this child and they FAILED in a big way. I hope they remember the pictures of Michaela’s battered and burned body for the rest of their lives. I agree with a previous post - shame on the Herald Leader for putting Michaela on trial by putting her problems and issues out for everyone to see. Hopefully Patrick & Joy Watkins will both meet a “special friend” in prison who will make them feel just as loved as Michaela did.
What we see here is a bunch of people that made some horrendous and horrible mistakes. I worry how this will be bent out of shape to use against other people that didn’t, haven’t, and won’t do this. What I mean is that we are all human beings capable of making mistakes, although there are not many of us that are capable of doing something this horrible, this grevious, this cruel, to any child, but one mistake shouldn’t be turned into another. The mistake of making it as an example of what this kind of person is like or what that kind of a person is like, because that is not nearly so.
From what I have read and perhaps unknowingly I have missed some of this? I haven’t read why the child was taken away from her mom? Who abused her to begin with and how that was investigation was carried out, what interventions or prevention mechanisms were put in place to keep it from happening again. I will try to go back over this now and look for that.
I also haven’t read who gave the little girl the drugs that were in her system? One time it said there were drugs found in her and the next it said she was taken off of them?
I have to say that to me this was cruel and unusual for these people to do this to a child it is unforgiveable, to me this may have even been a good death penalty case from what I’ve read.
What I want to reiterate is that not all people will do this, and not even those with the past history of courts that these people have had will do this. Not even near the amount that are being accused of being child abusers in this day and time. This is what waste part of the valuable time and resources that we must have to protect children like this and see to it that when the trials are fair and just and we must keep as open a mind as we can and realize that those who are charged in child abuse cases have every right to be considered innocent until they are proven guilty and that they have every chance to present the best evidence that they have.
Then once the evidence is presented as it has been in this case then and only then justice must be served. I worry for this mom that lost this little girl, really, I hope that someone that she trust will be there to comfort her and support her in her grief as this day is not going to be over for her for a long time.
These other two, well I feel no sympathy for them at this point in time. I think they deserve what they got and not to have drugs to take that will make them forget about it, but they need to think hard and long about this every day. They need to be in the right frame of mind to remember and know exactly what they did and why they are being treated the way that they are.
This to me wasn’t a mistake on their part, they should have and could have hollered for help any time they got ready, even if they didn’t take it outside the family I am sure that they could have made different choices. They could have not done this to this child, and they did. Neither of them has denied it, they know they did wrong, they need to work it through and learn to deal with it. That is what I think.
Hello i agree with linda I think that we should beat this couple within a inch of their lives, burn them from head to toe and let them wonder when the end is near and beg to die, i also think that Children Services should stand up and be held for some responsibility in this they always get off because this is our wonderful state workers it is ashame that you hear this more and more everyday we as a community need to protect our future and this is the children and quit worrying about the money or pissing someone off all the time. way to go jury, but i think they should never see parole.
Michaela, was a fun, loving, wonderful, enthuistic child. She enjoyed spending time with the family she belonged too before social
services, Patrik and Joy watkins became part of her life. She and her brother who is still in the custody of social services had good
lives before she was taken away she has uncles and aunts and cusions who have missed and loved her and her brother all along and would have loved to continued to be part of their lives but when a child’s
mother leaves with the children and no one knows where they are and can’t find them what do you do? Then to find out that social services are involved in their lives and you try to find them no one will help you or give you any information about a child in the custody of social services they won’t even tell wether they are in their custody or not even if your related their “not allowed to give out any information on any child” and no one wants to call you back and as for the biological mother of these children she fought with social services until patrick the biological father of Michaela not her brother showed up because of back child support and was able to gain custody of Michaela and her brother who is not even blood related to Partick or Joy the biological mother of these children pleaded with
the courts not to give Michaela to her father because he had threatened to take her life even in the womb!! and the court’s still let them have the kids I’m not sure but I would like to know if Patric and Joy were receving a check on Michaela’s brother as foster parents? Their will never be justice in this case even with the life in prison sentence they still get to live a life and where will the justice for Michaela’s brother be? his parent has fought with social services to no avail and still social services continues to keep him away from family who have loved him from the day he was born! They continend that Joy and Patrick’s children have created a bond with him and they should not be seperated and therapiest say it would be detramential to him to be reintruduced to his bioligolical family so still there is no justice in this case when social services recived complaints about Michaela’s weight they said she had an eating disorder! If they had bothered to realy investagate they could have learned she always had a healthy appetite and when she was an infant before her Mother and Patrick divorced she and her mother were malnourished because Patrick used food as a way of punishment then. They say they did a background check but they didn’t you know about a year eariler a social worker was killed in kentucky before Michaela’s death and you see how fast the laws to protect social workers was changed and it needed to be but. When will the laws of this state change for children? From county to county social workers don’t report to one another so a child from one county moves to another county and the first county has no clue they moved and the county their in doesen’t know the chidren have even been involved with social services so really how does a social worker know if a child has ever been involved with them in another county they take them from one parent in one county and give them to a parent in another county and that’s that. Why Why? shouldn’t social services in each county have to report that children are comming from another county? Why shouldn’t our state have a data base that lists all children involved with social services state wide. To include that all social worker’s must report any child moving ino a new county, to the new county’s social services agency then a home visit should be made and if they recive a report on a child a red flag should go up to notify the worker the child has been involved with them in the past I mean realy what would keep a parent with allogations of childabuse from moving to another county and killing their child? Who would ever know the child had been involved with social services. I don’t think its up to the state to raise our children it’s up to us as the parents of our own children to raise them with love guidance and all the things they need but for some unfortunate children this is not the life they get and those children need so desperately to be looked after and is that not the job of social services to protect the inocent the ones who can’t protect themselves. We as a suciety need to start holding people accountable from parents, social workers, law enforcement, judges and the courts, therapist, doctors, law makers,congress,and communites for our children they all need love, carring, understanding,suppot, and education in their lives. It’s so sad when I look into the future and try to imagine what our children are becomming some of them strive so hard to get along in life and some of them because no one cares for them cant learn to care for themselves or others I consider my self to still be quite young and I belive that my elders should have the up most respect because they made this country what it is and now not enough people care about what we’re becomming and how we are teaching our young not to care. I know most all people are hard working family loving people. But then every once and a while we get to see the hard side of life that I’m sure more people live through than what is thought and it never affectes any one until something like this happens and its right in your face and you cant look away then a lot of people are responsable for letting this situation get to the point that one of Gods angels was sent home early. But I ask now what as a society are we willing to do about it? The easy part was done Patrik and Joy are going to Prison for life but what about the next child that ends up in Michael’s shoes? What happens to that child the same as this one I hope not.
Children are the glory of God and to see him all you have to do is look into the smiling face of a child and you will always find him there. But remember also God said vengence is mine. (and) Send all murderers to me for I will judge them accordingly.
Michaela lived her hell here on earth. Put yourself in her place as a child. Your are afraid to question your providers when they beat and punish you in the way she was treated. You only try to lay low and try not to upset them. A dog should not be subjected to the treatment she recieved. Only remember this–in the New Testament, when the Apostles asked what is the greatest, Jesus led a small child into their midst, and said “this is the greatest. Woe be unto anyone who harms one of these little ones.” Michaela is now sitting on the right hand of Jesus, this you know. And the punishment her caretakers receive here on earth are but a drop in the bucket as to what they will receive in the hereafter. They will be punished for their actions.