"Theoretically, both mothers and fathers can face charges under these statutes, but attorneys who study these cases say that it’s usually women who are taken to court, often because of unrealistic expectations that mothers should be able to protect their children no matter what. In an interview with the
Norman Transcript, which has
Hogue’s case since the beginning, Oklahoma County public defender Ryan Sullivan described the law as “draconian” and “sexist.”
Over the last decade, hundreds of mothers have been prosecuted for similar charges in Oklahoma, according to a
Mother Jones analysis of court records. Some of them have received
than the men who actually committed the abuse.
After her son’s death, Hogue cooperated with law enforcement while they searched for her boyfriend, Trent. She told them she’d seen no warning signs to indicate that he’d been harming her child. Before meeting Trent, she’d been with other boyfriends who abused her, but Trent seemed different, gentler. And when she started noticing bruises on her son or that the boy seemed lethargic, Trent always brushed it off or had an explanation that seemed to make sense. “I’m really mad at myself,” Hogue told detectives during an interview following her son’s death,
the
Transcript. “I believed him when [Trent] said he must’ve fallen or had the flu.”
Some of the investigators felt sympathy for Hogue. In fact, Norman Police Department Detective Sean Judy, who led the investigation, stated before the trial that he did not believe she committed a crime. In a recorded conversation, he and another detective referred to her arrest as a “bullshit case.” They did not want to press charges, but the district attorney’s office proceeded anyway, arguing that Hogue must have known about or suspected the abuse."
