James Driggers (right), 33, and his wife Crystal (left), 33, ordered their 14-year-old daughter to set up a tent in woodland away from their home in Sumpter County, South Carolina, investigators say
So what did she do to deserve such a harsh punishment?
Accoridng to reports, she ate a Pop Tart without her parents’ permission.
James Driggers, 33, and his wife Crystal, 36, allegedly sent their daughter out into the forest in Dalzell, South Carolina, with nothing but a flashlight, a roll of toilet paper, a whistle and a watch, The Sumter County Sheriff’s Office said.
The wannabe bodybuilders who were released after a bond hearing on Monday, did not respond to requests for comment.
According to police, the girl was told he had to stay out there for a week and would have to meet someone at a fence at specific times to get food.
NBC reports, her brother delivered her an open can of Spaghetti-Os with a plastic spoon one afternoon, authorities said.
The child was also left to fend for herself during severe thunderstorms that hit the town Thursday night, police said.
She couldn’t return for any reason,” Police spokesman Braden Bunch said. “Not to get a drink, not to use the bathroom, nothing.”
She was found on Friday, after her grandmother called police after hearing she was outside Thursday. The grandmother went in the rain to take the child to her own home right around the corner, authorities said.
The tough punishment was intended to “make her feel how it would be to be homeless,” the concerned grandma told cops, according to the police report.
The mother and father forced their child to live in a tent after she ate a Pop-Tart without their permission, police have claimed (file picture)
NBC adds:
The Driggers have five other children, four of which were in the home at the time. Those siblings have been placed in the custody of their grandparents while the 14-year-old girl is with the South Carolina Department of Social Services.
“We feel very confident that the parents were overstepping their bounds,” Bunch said. “From trying to correct a child’s behavior to true criminal punishment.”
The raven-haired and tattooed Crystal Driggers is a “coach” with the Beachbody home fitness program. On her Facebook page, she hawks the company’s workout DVDs and color-coded meal portion containers.
“I am a busy mother of six and I know how hard it can be to squeeze in fitness and nutrition,” she wrote on her company profile. “Let me help you find the time to be happy and healthy!”
On June 3, Crystal posted a photo of her younger children and wrote, “Sometimes with all the teen drama that comes with the three older girls I lose sight of how much fun they can be. I working on changing that. [sic]”
Both parents have been charged with a single count of unlawful neglect of a child and more charges are possible as the investigation continues, police said.
James and Crystal Driggers. A South Carolina couple allegedly forced their 14-year-old daughter to live in the woods for a week after they caught her sneaking a sugary snack
The first question is, why does a child have to ask if they can eat something in their own home? How sad.
steroids make you crazy…and that is why cops need to be tested for steroids…you can easily pick them out…it makes you wonder why their superiors, with their background on visually picking out people on drugs, can’t see the steroid monsters in front of them daily.
Why does the South seem to produce these types of parents? I knew people like that growing up in Southern California, who’d moved there from places like Alabama and Georgia. Some of them are “just plain mean.” I think it is a lack of education and personal insight, the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. They have been brought up on the idea that this is a terrible sinful world, and they have to purify their kids or actually express their own envy of the young by making their lives miserable. It’s just plain dumb. At least the strong point in the family is that there was a grandma nearby to try and help.
It’s the rural environment, not strictly the South. Poor schools and lack of interest in learning in general, fundamentalist churches, few appropriate role models. I was raised in the devil’s triangle where Western PA, Eastern OH, and Northern WV meet. There are plenty of crazy parents there, too, and people who don’t fit the “norm” (LGBT, atheist, highly educated, merely liberal) keep their mouths shut because their children will be mocked and marginalized. It doesn’t shock me a bit that these SC parents find plenty of others to praise them. In some areas of this country people are proud of their stupidity.
West coast parents raise serial killers and people like you, who, always have comments but really have no clue what has happened. It seems as though you People have this image of white people in the south. What about the Africans in the south? Oh, but they’re great great great great great great great great grandparents were slaves. It’s racist to be called black, but normal to be called white. If these “pop tart” parents were black, you people would praise them for snack control.
“It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.” – Mark Twain
#idiotracist
All doubt has been alleviated.
# J’OnzznotJones
made to feel what it would be like to be homeless? for eating a Pop-Tart?? by the gods, what flavor was it?
and then to be given a can of Spaghetti-Os to eat… and with a /spoon/?! savages!
i guess it was all about permission, not nutrition or anything like that; high authoritarian mentality, and i guess the homelessness thing was about following orders or be on your own. well, being on her own, she could’ve eaten whatever she wanted, so…
I think these parents are horrible. However, all southerners are not the same. Every area has crazy people with problems. They should be singled out, meaning the entire south did not participate in leading this girl into the woods.
“Some people are idiots.” – MiSpi