Florida Mother Branded Her Two Young Children So She Could Tell That They Were Hers

20 Jun, 2014 by Cassy Fiano

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You’d think it might be a little hard for a parent to forget what their child looks like. Talk to Florida mother Kayla Oxenham then, who evidently struggled with identifying her children, and so came up with a solution: branding them with a hot stick so she would know they were her kids.

Police said Kayla Oxenham, 23, used a lighter to set the stick on fire before pressing it against the children’s bodies in order to mark them so she would know they were her own kids.

… Aged only five and seven, the children told police their mother did it so she knew they were her children, and so they could have ice cream.

… NBC News reported the children told police their mother said she ‘forgot how much she loved fire’ when the branding took place.

The children were taken for medical tests, where police discovered one of them had noticeable burn injuries.

It’s hard to tell if this is a case of mental illness or cruelty — but considering the mother allegedly talked about forgetting how much she loved fire, it seems to lean towards particularly cruel and horrifying child abuse. She’s been released on a $15,000 bond, hopefully to quickly receive a sentence with some hefty jail time, and to never see her children again.

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