I’m sure you’ve heard the name Ethan Stacy, in the past few weeks. Ethan Stacy was the 4 year old boy who was reluctantly sent across the country by the court system in late April to stay with his estranged Mother, Stephanie Sloop, and her fiance/new husband, Nathan Sloop. He was ordered by the divorce court judge to go spend the summer with his mother in Utah and leave the only home he had known with his father, Joe Stacy, in Virginia. Within days of arriving, the beating started. On May 5, Nathan Sloop, 31, took the 4-year-old child into a bedroom and began slapping and hitting him on the face and head, police said. Ethan’s face began to swell. Police said his mother did not alert anyone or seek medical attention for her son. He was beaten so badly that he could not attend the wedding of his mother and her fiance, for fear someone would report them.
For the next three days, police said, Ethan was vomiting, was lethargic, had a fever, and was not able to eat. His symptoms were consistent with a possible brain injury. Instead of trying to help the child, Nathan Sloop engaged in “a systematic and progressively more violent pattern of abuse.”
But no one knew.How could they? Joe Stacy had called his son every day after the child had been sent to Utah, but beginning on May 5, his former wife began to make excuses on the phone for why the boy could not talk to him.
On May 7, police said, Stephanie Sloop returned home from shopping to find that Ethan had been scalded on his feet, legs and buttocks. Nathan Sloop said the boy had burned himself in the bathtub.
On May 9 — Mother’s Day — Ethan was found dead in his bed.
Police said that Nathan and Stephanie Sloop did not notify anyone, but instead began “to formulate a plan to dispose of the body and deceive law enforcement.”
The couple, according to police, wrapped garbage bags around the child’s body and drove to Powder Mountain.
Police said Nathan Sloop took a hammer to Ethan’s face and teeth, in an effort to make him unrecognizable should anyone ever find him. The boy was then buried.
Late the next night, Stephanie Sloop reported the child missing. She told the Layton police that Ethan had walked away from home. Some 40 officers, in foul weather, searched for the child. But before long the Sloops’ story began to fall apart. Late on the afternoon of May 11, officers digging in the mud recovered his body.
Nathan and Stephanie Sloop are being held in the Davis County Jail. He is being held on suspicion of aggravated murder, felony child abuse, obstruction of justice and desecration of a corpse. She is being held on suspicion of felony child abuse, obstruction of justice and desecration of a corpse.
The body of Ethan Stacy, who had never wanted to leave his father in the first place, was flown back to Virginia last week. That is where, with summer coming, he was buried, this time with dignity and with love.
*This interview and information taken from Bob Greene’s article on CNN
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This video leaves me sad and disgusted. I do NOT know how a mother can allow someone, anyone, to hurt their child like this. Most Moms that I know would die for their child. This woman killed hers, perhaps not through direct action but by ignoring the obvious signs that Ethan was being brutalized by this asshole that she had married. I think this woman should be given the death penalty along with her sorry ass excuse for a husband. She stood by and let it happen..she allowed her son to be brutally beaten and killed and then participated in the cover up which included taking a hammer to his precious little face. He was 4 years old! This woman is the sorriest excuse for a human being on the face of the earth and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. I also think that more stringent interviewing/ background checks should be applied in custody battles when the parent and the child both so vehemently object to the parent in question. This little boy can not be brought back and he suffered a painfully cruel and degrading death, because the courts disregarded his pleas. I understand he was 4 and she was his mother, but if there were objections to the custody arrangement..someone should have looked into why. Now Ethan Stacy is dead and there are no do overs![/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]
