A Haunting Parenting Tale The details of the Maddie Soto murder case in Kissimmee, Florida, will not be repeated here. Rather, I’m going to offer a panoramic view of the actions by her mother, Jenn Soto, and describe the lessons to be learned from the slaughter of this blameless child. Jenn is middle-aged, overweight, and suffers from bipolar disorder and various other ailments that earn her disability money. After she and a Marine conceived Maddie, her life seemed to stabilize — if only for a short while. He quickly was out of her life. She next married a nice man with a daughter who was near Maddie’s age; the blended family of four functioned well for about a year. But slowly, her bipolar disorder blighted Jenn’s ability to be a parent or wife or even to leave her bed. Her new husband was working full-time, going to school, and parenting two young girls. He could not keep that up forever, and the two divorced the following year. They stayed friends and wanted their daughters to remain siblings. Everyone kept in touch. Jenn held sporadic jobs, but none ever lasted more than a month; she couldn’t afford to jeopardize her disability income. When the demands of raising Maddie got to be too much, she would either enlist her own mother or her extended family to take her for a few days. Maddie’s discarded corpse was found on the side of a road in February 2024. Jenn’s boyfriend of seven years is now in Florida’s Osceola County Jail awaiting trial for murder and sex abuse. As of this writing, the prosecution is seeking the death penalty. As for Jenn? She is now the most hated mother in U.S. history. Enter the Boyfriend Jenn never married Stephan Sterns (referred to hereafter as #3 because he doesn’t deserve a human name). But he was in and out of her household for roughly seven years and referred to himself as Maddie’s stepfather. Financially, he was a lost cause. He sponged off his parents, never held a job, and hand-painted expensive little figurines to help support his gaming habit. He had sleep apnea and kept an erratic schedule. His parents paid his rent, insurance and phone. Further, they often gave him spending money — even though he was 37 years old. One year, he met Jenn at Disney World in Orlando, where they both had short-term jobs. Maddie was about six years old when he met her. He and Jenn became a romantic item, and they moved in together very quickly. Although they couldn’t afford to eat out, the three of them went to parks and snuggled at home watching movies. Jenn trusted #3 completely and believed that he had her and Maddie’s best interests at heart. They broke up often, but #3 always came back to Jenn and Maddie. By February 2024, #3 had returned once again, Jenn had started yet another job, and she struggled with insomnia. Maddie had her thirteenth birthday party on a Sunday in late February, after which Jenn sent her and #3 to bed together so that she (Jenn) could get a good night’s sleep for her new job training. She never saw Maddie alive again, even though she claimed to. Revelations Neither Jenn nor #3 were accomplished liars, even though they both tried their best. Jenn told contradictory stories about when she had last seen Maddie. And her claim that she was so desperately in need of sleep fell apart when police discovered she was off work for the following Monday and Tuesday. The revelation that she, #3 and Maddie routinely slept together in the same bed, and that she would send “them” off to bed together when she herself needed a break from everybody, set off alarms with law enforcement. Ultimately, #3 surrendered his phone to police, claiming that he had accidentally hit its Reset button to restore the phone’s factory settings. Unfortunately for him, the phone failed to reset, and the police discovered more than 30,000 images of child sexual abuse material (CSAM), including 1,700 images of he and Maddie. This irrefutable evidence also established that #3 had begun sexually abusing Maddie beginning when she was 8. Jenn pretended to be flabbergasted but immediately called #3’s parents and told them their son needed a lawyer — quickly. Questions, denials, tears and charges against #3 followed. Public Fury Everyone in Florida wants Jenn to rot in jail, so much so that she is recognized in public and has gone into hiding. She has been granted derivative immunity for various interviews. To date, no charges have been filed against her, and this only adds to the public outcry. Jenn is not a woman who could talk herself out of so much as a speeding ticket. She had no explanation as to why her first reaction to the pictures of her daughter performing fellatio on #3 was to tell him to lawyer up. She could not understand how her behavior, post-death of her daughter, continued to protect #3. She sent Maddie to sleep in the same bed with #3 because of her own needs and cannot recognize why that was wrong. She told police that her worst fear had been the possibility of a “Woody Allen situation” between Maddie and #3 where she would be left out in the cold. She did not understand that she had let a beast live in her house and granted it unfettered access to her daughter. Jenn Soto: One-Off or One of Many? Jenn is a tremendous wreck of a parent, and it is very easy to dismiss her as a fool. Her story nonetheless raises many issues about a parent’s duty to protect their child versus said parent’s own need for companionship. Some broad statistics are instructive. It is well-established that blended families have a divorce rate of roughly 67%. Most people with children but no partner will soon pair up again, usually with someone who is also a parent. The odds are very much against the long-term success of these unions. Jenn herself experienced this with her own short-term marriage. It is equally well-established that the presence of a non-relative male in a child’s household poses a risk of abuse roughly 11% higher than a household with biological parents. Stepmothers may be the archetype of evil in fairy tales, but the true threat comes from non-relative males. Could the best practice be to stay uninvolved until the children are emancipated? This position requires sacrifice, delayed gratification and hardship. But after all, those realities are the collective heart of true parenthood. Most women who follow this route will ultimately acknowledge that not saddling a child with a stepfather was a necessary step to their child’s safety and development. This is an extreme position to take. But Maddie would be alive if her mother had stopped at her second try. Best Practices: Spot Grooming and Safety Strategies Since most people will never make that type of short-term sacrifice, and because many stepfathers provide genuine love and care to their non-biological children, a few pointers about grooming are important. Predators groom the parent first. It is no coincidence that #3 was interested in Jenn, who had very little to offer as a partner. She was needy and naively thought he had loved her. He pursued her because of her daughter. Predators groom in the open. Grooming starts in the presence of people the child trusts. A touch to a child’s shoulder is innocent, but a touch on a child’s bare leg in the presence of the mother may not be so innocent. The mother’s silent acceptance of the bare leg touch in her presence subliminally shows the child that it is acceptable. Once the child is “calibrated” to one touch, it is easier for the abuser to move forward. It happens gradually, then suddenly. Hemingway said this about how he went bankrupt, but his quip applies to sex abuse of children as well. Maddie did not sleep in the same bed alone with #3 on day one. Over time, it started with the three of them watching movies on the couch and then on the bed, then the three of them falling asleep together, and then Maddie and #3 sleeping in the same bed without Jenn. It took years for a full-blown sex act to take place. Jenn did not trust #3 at all to start with, but then trusted him all at once. Safety strategies. Most relationships reach a point where the “big” conversations take place. These usually include financial status, past relationships and long-term plans. Sadly, in many relationships, more time gets devoted to wedding planning than to the everyday nitty-gritty of living together. Mothers should develop a specific safety script to screen potential abusers before granting a new partner access to their children. It should include questions such as whether the prospective partner has ever had sexual thoughts about children; whether they themselves were ever abused; and what they think should happen to child sex abusers. Discussions should include basic boundaries, such as who should sleep where; whether bathroom doors are ever left open when in use; the limits of horseplay and wrestling; and whether a child can refuse physical affection such as a hug or kiss. An unwillingness to take part in such a frank discussion is a harbinger of trouble. Every household has certain house rules, and these rules should include mutual understandings about how adults interact with children. Non-relative males should know the house rules on physical punishments, teasing and when to stop, and on commenting on a child’s body. Undoubtedly, some will characterize this advice as liberal meddling into the private lives of citizens. Clear expectations on behavior are the backbone of effective safety strategies to avoid child abuse. Summary Jenn wanted a relationship so badly that she would accept it on any man’s terms. Some say that she simply pimped out her daughter to #3. There is speculation that she and #3 were part of a criminal enterprise that sold child porn for profit. Others reported that she and Maddie were very close and loved each other dearly, but that Jenn was with #3 for so long that she became blind to the obvious. Some say her mental illness is to blame. None of these theories change the fact that Maddie died at 13 by the hands of Jenn’s #3. Here are the hard lessons that parents should consider: 1. The best practice for a child’s well-being may be to avoid a stepparent situation altogether. The failure rate for blended families is so high that an objective conclusion is that they’re simply not worth the risk. Few parents will have a step-partner who ends up with a Death Row case. Many more will not consider the implications of allowing a stranger full access to their child. The risk that these parents take is not their own, but their child’s. 2. The next best practice is for the biological parent to stay ever vigilant about the relationship between their child and the stepparent. Trust slowly and never completely. Monitor the stepparent’s increasing access that seems to happen naturally and stop it. Make a clean break. Finally Everyone familiar with Maddie Soto is haunted by her death. Jenn Soto’s behavior was at the very least reckless, but there are many parents who take unnecessary risks with their children by not understanding the potential danger posed by non-relative parents. The lack of a thoughtful safety strategy