yes, it’s illegal – even in the south

i want to apologize to alabama…

…as in the state, not the band with the epic mountain music country album of the 1980’s.

i thought the story i’m about to cover came from there, but it was actually from virginia. i further thought they were the state that took their sweet ass time in ratifying the thirteenth amendment (the constitutional amendment that ended slavery) but that was mississippi (who didn’t ratify it until 1995).

so, um, yeah…my bad.

so, a virginia couple was in the news recently for adopting five black kids and then basically treating them like slaves, forcing them to do labor around their farm without pay (last i heard getting your kids to do that, regardless of color, was just called “chores”) and not allowing them in the house (that’s a red flag), making them sleep in the barn (another red flag), where there was no running water or electricity (amish barn?), and they had recently moved there after fleeing the state of washington because they were being investigated for…well…this. crossing state lines with the kids also racked em up a “human trafficking” charge, but i’d argue it was more “fleeing prosecution” and they didn’t wanna leave the kids behind?

still all sorts of fucked up no matter how you slice or dice it.

reading up on this was interesting, because half the sources i read felt obliged to point out in the headline it was a ‘white couple’ whereas the rest, i suppose, kinda knew that was implied by the level of fuckedupedness? i know i figured that when i read the first headline i saw, which didn’t include the word ‘white’ because, well, who else would do shit that fucked up?