Little Maggie May never saw her first Thanksgiving or her first Christmas. She died after being added to a washing machine with a load of clothes – by Lindsey Fiddler, her drug-addled mother.

On November 4, 2010, Maggie’s great-aunt noticed that Lindsey passed out on the couch without having the baby anywhere around her. She went looking for the ten-day-old baby. Understandably, the washing machine was not the first place she looked. By the time she located the baby in the washer, the infant was dead. The mother is now in jail, awaiting trial.

According to the great-aunt, Lindsey had been up for days, probably using meth. When police questioned the mother, she said she didn’t know how the baby got into the washer and that she didn’t use meth any more. But a toxicology scan showed that she tested positive for methamphetamine, amphetamine, benzodiazepine and opiates.

Those who don’t abuse drugs and have never been addicted may not be able to grasp how this could happen. Narconon is an international organization dedicated to eliminating addiction through effective drug and alcohol rehabilitation and drug prevention services. But someone who is on four different drugs like these is going to be hugely out of touch with reality. Who knows what her perceptions were like? All we know is that they were terrible enough to result in the death of a beautiful child.

Unfortunately, Maggie’s story is far from the only one of its kind. Hundreds of thousands of children suffer neglect, injury or death at the hands of substance abusing parents. One survey stated that substance abuse was involved in 75 percent of all foster home placements.

The answer is drug rehabilitation that works, that enables a parent to live a drug-free, productive life. Of parents who come to Narconon drug rehab centers around the world to recover from addiction, seven out of ten stay clean and sober after they get home. This means hundreds of children who have the opportunity to live safely in their own homes again.

Via EPR Network
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