Mother Tapes Child to Wall for Peace and Quiet, Posts Whole Thing to Facebook

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An Ohio mother was arrested this week for a mind-boggling act of child abuse in which she taped her toddler to the wall so she could “get some work done.” And police never would have found out about it if she hadn’t filmed the whole thing and posted it on Facebook.

According to CNN, 18-year-old Shayla Rudolph actually live-streamed the incident on Facebook Live while it was happening. It’s really disturbing. The poor little toddler is wearing a diaper and crying, and his mother has him taped to the wall with clear packing tape.

“You’ve got the best mommy in the whole wide world,” she says over her shoulder as she walks away.

Rudolph said she was taping the boy to the wall because she needed to clean the house.

“You can’t clean without them running around tearing up? Tape them to the wall,” she said. She seemed to think it was OK because he could see the TV from where he was taped, even though she taped his mouth too and he was obviously crying. Throughout her video, Rudolph advocates taping a child to the wall as a solution to a lot of toddler-related problems like not being able to cook or clean with them running around.

Rudolph might have been under the impression that she’d just solved the world’s toddler problems, but at least some of her viewers recognized it as child abuse and alerted the authorities. Child services showed up on Thursday, and not long after that Rudolph was back on Facebook Live telling people she didn’t care.

“This time y’all can take him,” she said.

CBS reports that the little boy has been taken into custody by child services. Rudolph is facing a felony abduction charge and between nine months and five years in prison.