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Mother Starved Kids And Beat Them For Complaining About Hunger

By Chelsea Hoffman
Published on: 12:52 PST, Dec 7, 2015

A Charlotte, North Carolina mother has been convicted of child abuse after she reportedly starved her own children. That’s not the only detail in this case of child abuse. WOKV News reports the woman not only starved her children, but she allegedly has a violent way of handling their complaints about hunger.

Authorities say Ronika Bell kept her children locked in a bedroom in her home, denying them access to food. The Charlotte mother admitted in court that she committed this crime, but she also admitted to beating the children violently whenever they’d complain about being hungry while locked in the room. A 10-year-old child belonging to the North Carolina woman told police that even though they were being starved, there was plenty of food in the house. The children also told detectives that the food they were given was minimal — cereal with water instead of milk

“They were withheld food, they were withheld attention, and they were also occasionally physically beaten. The children, the information obtained from the children, is that there was plenty of food in the home, they were just now allowed access to it. They were not fed,” a police report said.

A police report seems to correlate with the claims made by the 10-year-old victim. According to police, the cupboards and refrigerator in the home were full of food. The children also told authorities that Ronika and her boyfriend, Deron Cutherbertson, would intentionally prepare food so that the smell would “torture” the children that they were denying nutrition. The children were not allowed to eat the food that was prepared by their mother.

The Daily Mail reports that the abuse was discovered by the biological father of the children, after the North Carolina mother dropped them off at his home. The father of the three abused children claimed that they appeared “gaunt” and malnourished after being in the care of their mother — who was also accused in 2014 of keeping the children away from their father. Ronika Bell has been sentenced to 100 hours of community service and 18-months of supervised probation. The judge overseeing this case also reportedly put “dismissals” on the table in the event that the North Carolina mother. If she follows through with the sentencing she may have some of the charges against her dismissed. She has also been sentenced to five years of imprisonment associated with this case.

This isn’t the first time a parent has been accused of starving their own children. Earlier this year, a mom in Houston, Texas was accused of locking her sons in a closet in her home while starving them. Police in Houston described her 10-year-old son as “so malnourished that he looked like a prisoner of war.”

Also this year, another woman was accused of starving her five children. Jessica Dawn Lazek Petroni allegedly let her children starve in a home that was so filthy that it was full of garbage and feces. Ironically, the woman advertised online that she was aiming to operate a home daycare service. Authorities say her youngest child, a 3-month-old boy, was verging on death due to the level of starvation he was experiencing at the hands of his mother.

Regarding Ronika Bell’s sentence, do you think five years of imprisonment is long enough after starving her kids and beating them simply because they complained about being hungry?

[Photo via Charlotte Police]

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