Papky

The live of a child is these days equivalent to that of a parrot! Well at least this is so in the case of Donna Louise Greenwell who trade to trade two children, a 5-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl, who had been in Greenwell’s custody for over a year.

Greenwell called the buyers – Paul J. Romero, 46, and Brandy Lynn Romero, 27 – early last year after seeing a flyer they posted offering a cockatoo for sale, and offered to deliver the children for about $2,000 (£1,300). When the Romeros said they could not afford that, a deal was stuck for the bird, valued at $1,500 (about £975), plus cash.

Greenwell’s attorney claims that  it was a clumsy attempt at an adoption proceeding and that Greenwell was only trying to help the children to be placed in a proper home.

Greenwell, 53, was sentenced on Monday to 15 months of hard labour on two counts of ‘sale of a minor’.

The children had been ‘abandoned to her care,’ according to a lawyer for Greenwell, and neither the children’s’ mother or father could be found.

In her defense, Greenwell’s attorney claimed that he $175 (about £113) was to cover the cost of an attorney to transfer custody of the children to the Romeros. The cockatoo was intended as a gift to Greenwell’s granddaughter, he added.

The Romeros had previously pleaded guilty to two felony counts of sale of a minor child, but their five-year prison sentences were suspended in exchange for their testimony against Greenwell.