Does everyone remember Ernest and Anne Fugate, Ohio’s nomination for parents of the year? The Fugates, if your brain is a little fuzzy, are the foster parents who got drunk in the Muni Lot last month, fought, and decided to ditch their 9-year-old with some strangers. Cops nabbed them as they tried to leave, apparently at peace with returning childless back to their home three hours away.
Well, they were in court yesterday to answer to child endangerment charges. They pleaded not guilty, according to NewsNet5.
ONN’s Cristin Severance asked the couple to tell their side of the story after a pretrial hearing in court Wednesday. They shook their heads and left the talking to their attorney Michael Goldberg.
“I would say, that there is going to be two sides to this story. The city has one side and we are going to have our side. And our side will come out in court,” Goldberg said.
The Fugates were granted a continuation and a new court date. The boy is in foster care in Pickaway County where children services is conducting it’s own investigation.
Their side? Unless that side is, “Our foster son was much better off with two strangers than with us, two giant dumb yokels,” we don’t know what that could be.
This article appears in Oct 12-18, 2011.
Please don’t say things like “Unless that side is, ‘Our foster son was much better off with two strangers than with us, two giant dumb yokels,’ we don’t know what that could be,” if you don’t know the details of what happened. That’s irresponsible, speculative and inflammatory.
Children’s services is only investigating how to cover it’s #$$ on this one- it’s only about those federal $$ to them. Studies have consistently shown children in foster care are more often neglected, abused & molested in foster care than in the general population. Obama should give these programs a new name: “Cash For Kids”. Guess who pays for this idiocy? YOU. with our social security funds. Wake up, people, and for goodness sakes I hope the real parents find out because with all this publicity they oughta be able to get a real lawyer instead of the the court-appointed crooks they usually get that are in collusion from the beginning with CPS cutting back room deals that violate the non-existent constitutional rights of the poor parents that were probably targeted from the beginning for their lack of resources to defend their family.