Police: Arizona woman led sons on crime spree

Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2009-07-04 16:51

Story here. Excerpt:

'PHOENIX – Cynthia Mary Roberson is an unemployed mother who police say led her 12- and 14-year-old sons and their friends to commit at least 20 armed robberies and assaults, including the beating of a teenage boy who had nothing more than an orange lollipop.

Her motivation was purely financial — police said she needed money to pay rent and the loan on her gold Chevrolet. In every case, the mother drove the getaway car and once coached a kid during a robbery because he was having trouble stealing a cell phone from a victim, police said.

The case has outraged authorities and the public and drawn comparisons to "Ma Barker," the infamous mother who led her four young sons on a robbery spree in the early 1900s.'

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Comments

By casting her as a modern 'Ma Barker' the news is trying already to romanticize what she did. Basically she has used her sons to commit crimes 'by proxy'. This should come as little surprise given how many crimes are committed (esp. violent ones) at someone else's instigation - usually someone else who would rather not risk herself (or himself) physically or legally but get someone else to take that risk.

Excluding sexual or serious physical abuse and possibly abandonment (depending on how that is done), I can't imagine a bigger betrayal of trust by a parent than something like this.

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Submitted by Matt on Sat, 2009-07-04 16:55

question (comparison): will she get more time than if she
had sex with 2 boys of this age?

i say either way the full force of the law will
down on her. boom, bang, drum roll.....

1 yr. suspended sentence? w/ probation, of course.
probably eventually give the kids back to her.

about the same as for "having an affair"?
tough call.

damaged her sons? heck, at least they won't
have to pay her c.s. for the "honor".

based on the "quality" of past judgements,
i'd say we've got perverts on both sides of the bench.

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Submitted by daveinga on Sat, 2009-07-04 19:41