In the case of 9-month-old Brantley Farmer, who died this weekend of trauma to his brain, a familiar figure is under arrest: the mother’s boyfriend.
That’s often how it goes, said Christopher Bish, a captain in the sheriff’s department of Morgan County, where the suspect in Farmer’s death is being held. In his 40 years of experience, he said, “it was always the boyfriend that did something to the child.”
To Judge Velma Tilley, a juvenile court judge in Bartow County, that scenario just makes sense. “If you have a boyfriend who is not related to a child, I think there’s a heightened chance that something will happen to that child,” Tilley said.
But here’s the thing: National statistics on child deaths tell a very different — and even more disturbing — story. Boyfriends are not the adults most likely to kill a child. Not even close.
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