"Jane" HERDENER - 8 yo - Palm Bay FL

The traditional punishment of washing out a child's mouth with soap led to charges against two people in Brevard County.
Adriyanna Herdener and Wilfredo Rivera were arrested by Palm Bay police in connection with the incident.Authorities
with the Department of Children and Families said Herdener, who is the
child's mother, and Rivera took the punishment too far."Our
detectives with our special victims unit investigated this, and this
went way beyond discipline. This went way beyond punishing the child.
This was -- in their words -- malicious torture," Palm Bay Police
Department spokeswoman Yvonne Martinez said.DCF investigators
said the 8-year-old girl was forced to chew on the bar of soap and had
an allergic reaction that required medical attention. They said the
child was forced to clean up her vomit, and investigators said the
parents refused to take her to the emergency room.

It was a Wednesday evening along Shenandoah Road when the 8-year-old girl said a bad word, Palm Bay Police said.
According to investigative
reports, the girl's mother, 32-year-old Adriyanna Herdener, deferred
punishment to her live-in boyfriend, 41-year-old Wilfredo Rivera. After
all, he was the father of their 18-month-old daughter and, as Herdener
told police, "the head of the household."What happened next went from simple punishment to what police call a crime and saw both adults lose custody of their children.Herdener
told police that Rivera went into the home's bathroom, grabbed a bar of
Irish Spring soap sitting in a dish and told the girl not just to wash
her mouth out with it, but to eat it.It
is a ramped-up version of an old-fashioned punishment many of today's
adults endured as children -- and one experts say just doesn't work
anymore, if it ever did."I
think what parents have to keep in mind is that, when a child does
anything, discipline is a chance to teach," said Ginny Gleason, a
Brevard Public Schools parent involvement resource teacher.Herdener
told police she stood by and watched as her asthmatic daughter chewed
on the green bar with white swirls for more than 10 minutes, crying.
The girl began foaming at the mouth.Like
many soaps on the market today, Irish Spring contains anti-bacterial
ingredients, which experts say is great for killing germs, but
poisonous if ingested.Palm
Bay police spokeswoman Yvonne Martinez said the girl threw up after
eating half the soap bar and begged through tears to rinse her mouth
out."He laughed at her," Martinez said. "And then the mother made her clean up the vomit."As
the girl slipped into anaphylactic shock, her lips, mouth and throat
began to swell. Police said she was in danger of suffocating.Herdener
told Rivera to take the girl to the hospital because she "didn't want
to deal with" officials from the Department of Children and Family
Services, according to police reports .When
Rivera arrived at Palm Bay Hospital, he explained to medical staff what
had happened. But when he realized they were calling the police, he
grabbed the girl and bolted from the emergency room -- heading back to
the Shenandoah Road duplex, investigators said.Signs of trouble

Shenandoah
Road is a side street between U.S. 1 and the railroad tracks, lined
with the duplexes and single-family homes of working-class families and
retirees. The Rivera-Herdener home sits beside the tracks, shaking as
the boxcars rumble by. Neighbors said the family had lived there for
less than six weeks.It
was already a troubled household. Records with the Brevard County Clerk
of the Courts show that Herdener sued Rivera for child support payments
in August.After
Rivera carried the girl back into the house near midnight, Herdener
told police she gave her daughter Benadryl and put her to bed.That's
when Palm Bay police knocked on the door. The hospital had sent them to
the address Rivera had written on a form. Police found the girl in bed,
wheezing."It
could have turned life-threatening if we hadn't gotten there when we
did," Martinez said. "The parents were more concerned about avoiding
police interaction."Martinez
said the soap punishment rose to the level of a crime because of the
malicious torture involved and the protection and help the mother
failed to provide to her child. She said other old-fashioned
punishments, such as spanking with a switch or belt, can also become
crimes."Parents have been arrested for using the belt when it leaves welts," Martinez said.Gleason said soap in the mouth simply is not a good way to teach a lesson."It's just not appropriate to put anything that is not a food item into a child's mouth," she said.She
added that it is harder for children to avoid exposure to bad words
today because it is so prevalent in movies, on television and in songs.Gleason
added that she is opposed to using any form of corporal punishment.
Instead she urges parents to model good behavior to children, be
consistent with punishment and threats of punishment, reinforce a
child's positive behavior, spend quality time with children away from
the television and video games and seek advice from experts.Kids in foster care

Both
Herdener and Rivera are out of jail. They are charged with neglect of a
child and child abuse and face a November court hearing.The 8-year-old girl and her 18-month-old half sister are in foster care.Gleason urged all parents to seek out help if they need it, rather than abuse a child."It's
the most important job they'll ever have, but there's no instruction
for it," Gleason said. "It's not easy raising children."