A 7 year old little girl will be returning to her mother, after spending over a month in foster care. The 38 year old women was brutally beaten with the butt of a shot gun and raped. The man broke into her home in Georgia, locked the little girl in the closet of the same room her mother was raped in. The rapist then told the mother that he was going to rape her young daughter. The mother ran to the kitchen to retrieve a butcher knife to protect her daughter. She struggled in a fight for her own life and her daughter’s life. He was stabbed repeatedly. In the struggle the mother was stabbed and her attacker threw a pot of boiling tea from the stove on the mother. The attacker exited the house and reentered, the women stabbed the attacker several more times. The mother did end up killing her rapist. The attacker turned out to be a man she knew in high school.

The mother was in serious condition, recovering from her injuries, trauma of being raped and killing a person. Her daughter was not harmed and was placed in foster care. The mother had to complete a psychological evaluation before a judge could decide if her daughter would return to the care of her mother.

People have very strong feelings and views on this matter.

I personally know I would protect my children at all cost in the same situation. I feel that you have the right to protect yourself and your children in your own home from being attacked or worse. As a mother I could endure the rape myself but don’t touch my children.

Is it right that the mother should have to complete a psychological evaluation to get her child back because she was the victim of a violent crime? Is she being punished because she protected her child by killing a man that was going to rape the child?

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do."
Eleanor Roosevelt