one of the saddest tales i have heard in a long long time

i am always amazed things like this can and do happen in our country

A Baby's Death, Grim as the Life of His Mother
By ALAN FEUER
This article was reported by Alan Feuer, Ann Farmer and Leslie Kaufman and written by Mr. Feuer.
Her parents were once homeless. A family member says that her mother and her only sister died of AIDS. Her childhood passed in a dismal drift: housing projects, group homes where others stole her clothes. She lived in drug-infested city shelters; she worked in a fast-food place, a relative said, where bosses found her "slow." She cut school. She cleaned bathrooms. And even in her 20's wet the bed.
Then Tracina Vaughn became a mother. There were many men, and, records show, at least one who hit her and hurt her boy. One man tossed the baby clear across a bedroom, officials said. Later, the child was burned in scalding water and left untreated for at least two days. Emergency medical workers found his little body wet with pus. Counseling followed, and five years' probation; then her children - there was now a second baby - were taken from her.
The case file thickened as they were shuffled from one place to another - with relatives, with strangers. But in March, against her family's wishes, the boys were returned.
Then, last Sunday, the younger boy, Dahquay Gillians, died. Ms. Vaughn, 25, had left him unattended in the bathtub, in an unlighted bathroom, with his 3-year-old half-brother, prosecutors say. She found him floating face-down in the water. For 40 minutes, the authorities said, Ms. Vaughn, who had by then added drug use to her list of problems, had been listening to CD's.
"Tracy should never have had children," said a family member who asked not to be named because of the painfully personal nature of her relative's case. "Tracy didn't like children. She didn't like no one. Tracy wasn't affectionate with nobody." ..........