Super parents?

Describing the case against Vanessa Jackson, the NYT's RICHARD LEZIN JONES says,

Bruce Jackson rose in a packed courtroom here on Friday, 95 pounds heavier and 15 inches taller than he was 27 months ago when he was found rummaging through a neighbor's garbage can looking for food.

He looked directly at his adoptive mother, who was about to be sentenced to seven years in prison for systematically starving him and his three younger brothers in a case that drew national attention to the failures of New Jersey's child welfare system.

...Prosecutors said they were at a loss for a motive as to why the four boys were starved and abused while five other children in the house were allowed to live normal lives.

...Ms. Jackson's daughter Vernee was among her four biological children who spoke in her behalf.

She said that the case had torn her family apart, and that her mother did not deserve to go to jail. She and her mother sobbed briefly before Vanessa Jackson regained her composure and resumed her stoic stare.

The Rev. Harry L. Thomas, the pastor of the Medford, N.J., church that the family attended and who has remained steadfast in his support of Ms. Jackson, also testified for her.

"I've known these people as very loving people," Mr. Thomas told the court, "people who have a heart for children and they have a heart for God."

But Judge Robert G. Millenky of State Superior Court was unmoved. He said Ms. Jackson deserved the maximum seven-year term because her conduct "fits the description of cruel activity."

New York's David France says Keziah, whom the Jacksons adopted when she was less than a week old, tells the Jacksons they are "super parents"

...a sustained look at the Jackson case suggests that the parents' initial explanation of events—and Keziah's portrait of the mood within the family—may be closer to the truth. Adoption records and medical documents indicate that the boys—Bruce most of all—were placed with the Jackson family in part because they already suffered from the very medical and psychological traumas the parents now stand accused of causing. Interviews with numerous family friends—including a lawyer, a doctor, a child-welfare advocate, and a police officer who saw the children every week—all dispute the prosecutors' case down to its smallest particulars. There is no denying that the boys were grievously malnourished. But there's a world of difference, in the view of the Jacksons' allies, between the deliberate starvation and neglect that Raymond and Vanessa Jackson stand accused of and the inept struggles of two well-meaning foster parents who were in way over their heads, tasked with caring for needy children in an overcrowded household of limited resources.

If we can't sort out the truth here, how can we figure out more complex issues?