Madelyne Toogood - Irish Traveller

When the ironically named Madelyne Gorman Toogood started laying into her 4-year-old daughter in a parking lot, she figured nobody would notice. Captured on video, she looks over her shoulder, as if to ensure that no witnesses are on hand, then she leans into the car and starts pummeling the child. The coverage over at ABC news and also at CNN both featured the department store video clip (viewable provided you subscribe to their video feeds), which raises the question of whether it is ethical to provide a streaming movie of a mother abusing her daughter.

An interesting note was added by the coverage over at FOX news, which reveals the following:

Toogood grew up as part of a group of Texas-based Irish Travellers, itinerant laborers who often make their living with home-improvement and business-repair work, such as paving, painting and roofing.

The Irish Travellers are basically gypsies, grifters who work cities like the old-time carnies who were wont to fleece the yokels and scram before daybreak. Driving a distinctive sort of carry-all van, they'll offer to pave your driveway and you'll be thrilled with their workmanship—until the first good rain. The link above to Traveller's Rest notes that not all Travellers are thieves and to those who are hard-working honest people, no offense is intended here.

Mishakawa Indiana authorities (where the event occurred) said, "she did have a history of retail store fraud," which is in keeping with the Traveller lifestyle; the beating she gives her daughter is administered after a failed attempt to scam the department store outside which the event occured. In their extremely insular culture, Traveller women are generally married off within a clan at very early ages, often as young as 11 or 12. One wonders what kind of pathology Toogood may have acquired as a result of her abnormal upbringing, and what future awaits her young daughter.