Legal Question in Criminal Law in Pennsylvania

I have a question that I'm hoping you can answer. See, we have babysat a seven year old and a four year old for a long time, don't quite know when we started, I think it's been a year now. Anyways, A few days ago my sixteen year old sister, who is mentally disabled, was assaulted by the seven year old and four year old. My younger sister can function but she has the mind of a child and does not respond like regular people in bad situations. The seven year old we babysit, and her younger sister, went into my sisters room and my sister followed. For a while they played but then things started getting out of hand. The children kept shutting the door and turning off the light even after my older sister kept opening the door. My Mom, my older sister, and I, were in the house at the time but heard nothing and did not know what was occurring at the time. All was silent until the girls came out and but my sister stayed in her room for quite a while. It was later on that my younger sister told us that the seven year old, beat her with her fists but not hard enough to create bruises on my younger sister, choked her while saying, "Am I choking you yet?", covered her head with a pillow case and kept saying, "Kill! Kill! Kill!" Worst of all, the seven year old encouraged her younger sister to join in, and because she looks up to her older sister, she did. My younger sister is traumatized and very fearful. She can't stop relieving the event and does not feel safe in her own home. Today is our last day watching the seven year old and possibly the four year old. But this is not the first time the seven year old has misbehaved. She has stolen from us before, and just a while ago stole my Mother's wedding ring, she even confessed to doing it before we got it back. She has lied to us countless times and given us many problems before. Her Mom has had so many problems with the seven year old that she has given up on her by not punishing her when she does wrong and not telling her that what she is doing is bad. The seven year old has told us before that she can only ever be bad because her Mom does not tell her otherwise. The Seven year old even ran away from home to her Mom's work several months ago. She does not think, only acts because she doesn't think of the consequences and believes that she's the only one who can be right and that everyone else is wrong. We have corrected her before but she doesn't listen let alone learn. We have told her Mom that her daughter needs to be in therapy and we have given her options but she said she wants to do it on her own terms, in other words, it's probably not going to happen for a while, if at all. We are thinking about pressing charges but have no evidence since no bruises were left. We could bring the seven year old to the stand but since she has lied before there's no telling what she would do. Her younger sister has a great difficulty speaking because the seven year old has always done the talking for her. And their single Mother... there's no telling what she would say or do; I don't think she even realizes that she's not a good Mom. We took these children in and even babysat them for free for a time when their Mom couldn't pay us because of the cost, we have been kind to them and tried putting the children on the right path but the Mom needs to do more but won't. To which I ask, if we press charges and there's no evidence but there were three people in the home when it was occurring, would our case have a chance in court if Noelle testified?


Asked on 7/01/16, 4:38 am

1 Answer from Attorneys

John Davidson Law Office of John A. Davidson

This should be handled by Children and Youth,

{John}

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Answered on 7/01/16, 6:23 am


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