Child welfare officials may soon investigate a St. Louis woman because of a video where she instigates a fistfight between two diaper-clad kids.
The images were posted Sunday on Facebook and sparked an immediate outrage, getting the attention of the Missouri Department of Social Services. It shows a fistfight between two small children and in the background a woman's voice encourages the scuffle. She yells at the children -- whose faces are blurred - saying things like, “Got some action! Got some action! Y’all better ball up some fists!”
An acquaintance of the woman who posted the video told St. Louis TV station KTVI that that the mother needed to stopped.
“It’s just sickening and I feel like there should be some kind of criminal action taken,” she told the station. “I couldn’t even watch the whole video. I had to stop it and look again. It was sad.”
Although KTVI has sent the video to Missouri's Department of Social Services, a spokesman at that agency said she was forbidden by law to say whether they had seen the video or whether they were investigating the mother, the New York Daily News reported.
But whether it can be considered child abuse depends on other factors, according to Sean McCormack, a district attorney who prosecutes child abuse cases in Pennsylvania.
He said told WHP-TV that depending on the severity of the fight, this mom could be charged with endangering the welfare of a child or corruption of minors, but both scenarios would be very rare.