Recently in Child Abuse Category

A 37-year-old West Side woman was charged with child endangerment after her one-year-old grandson ingested small amounts of cocaine and PCP from pieces of aluminum foil in her home, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. After family members noticed the boy was lethargic he was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital, where doctors founded traces of the drugs in his system. 

Yolanda Beck, who has a long history of drug arrests, faces one misdemeanor count of endangering the life and health of a child, according to police.

Just about anyone with functioning reproductive organs can become parents. Making the baby, at least initially, is the easy part (often done with no intention of actually making a baby) but parenting is difficult, infinitely humbling work. Still, being a horrible parent is not necessarily against the law.

Leaving your two toddlers at home alone while you go out on a Friday night (Sun-Times)? Yeah, that's not only uncool but also quite illegal.

One of two children allegedly left home alone by their mother, both between the ages of two and three, was seen by a neighbor crying on an outside deck of an apartment. The neighbor called the police and the mother, 24-year-old Far South Side resident Loran Guzman, was charged with two felony counts of endangering the life and health of a child.

A 76-year-old Naperville man, Daniel G. Hernandez, faces a possible deportation after his trial on sexual molestation charges, regardless of the outcome in court (Sun-Times). He has been accused of sexually abusing one of his grandchildren last December.

Hernandez remains in DuPage County Jail on a $17,500 bond, although US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents issued a "no bond" hold on the defendant, which means he's to be held until ICE officials can work out a bond for his deportation proceedings.

Anyone who's seen the 1990s film "Trainspotting" remembers the gruesome scene in which an otherwise healthy infant dies from days (weeks?) of neglect because her drug-addicted parents were constantly nodding-off from hard narcotics.

That was a work of fiction, but the humanity-draining qualities of heroin and similarly hard drugs are very real.