Police from Reynoldsburg, Ohio, charged the mother, 18-year-old Shayla Rudolph, with the third-degree felony on Thursday, and said that Franklin County children services had taken her son into protective custody. In a statement, the department said that they were alerted to the video on Wednesday by a local news station.
“It appeared the child was restrained by the tape for approximately 15 minutes,” the department said . The 1 January video shows a toddler, his mouth taped over by clear packing tape and his body taped to a wall, who can be heard crying throughout.
“You got the best mommy in the whole wide world,” Rudolph says in the video. “Don’t make me put more tape. Now sit still. You can see the TV from right there. You’ll be alright.”
Rudolph then explains to her audience that she taped her child to the wall in order to clean the house. “Parents don’t need to whoop their kids,” she says. “You can’t clean with them running around tearing up? Tape them to the wall. You can’t cook or none of that because they running around? Tape them to the wall.”
The local news station, WSYX, said it had been alerted to the video by a viewer, and sent a reporter to Rudolph’s house. She did not answer the reporter’s questions, saying only, “Have a nice day.” She did not immediately answer questions from the Guardian.
A few days after her original video, child services officials visited Rudolph, and she posted a video taunting viewers and authorities. “They called children services on me, so fuck it, now he in the corner,” Rudolph said in the second video.
“What you gonna do now? Call children services now? You can have his ass. I don’t give a fuck. This time y’all can take him.”
Rudolph’s arrest marks the second high-profile case this month of charges following a Facebook Live broadcast of a crime. In Chicago earlier this month, police charged four people with kidnapping, battery and hate crimes after they posted a video in which they bound and beat a person with disabilities. Over the last year, Facebook has struggled to remove or moderate videos of abuse, violence and self-harm on its platform. A video in which a girl killed herself quickly spread across Facebook this week, although it was not the original host, and last year Baltimore police convinced the company to take down a live-streamed standoff between a woman and officers.
Ohio mother who taped son to wall on Facebook Live faces charges
21 January 2017
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An Ohio woman was charged with abduction on Thursday after she taped her two-year-old son to a wall and broadcast the episode on Facebook Live earlier this month.
