A woman walks into a Walmart in Mississippi with her two-year-old daughter. She takes the child to the bathroom. She removes the girl's diaper. She places the diaper on the floor. Then she forces the toddler to eat from it. A customer hears the child screaming. Police watch the security footage. The mother is arrested. The nation is horrified.

In August 2013, 23-year-old Leah Sorensen was shopping at a Walmart in Meridian, Mississippi, when she took her daughter into a family restroom. What happened inside was captured by surveillance cameras placed outside the stall. Sorensen admitted to police that she forced the child to eat feces from her own diaper as punishment for soiling herself. The toddler was examined at a hospital and found to have injuries consistent with the mother's account. Sorensen was charged with child abuse and later pleaded guilty. She received a twenty-year sentence, with ten years suspended. The child was placed in foster care.

The case raised questions about the limits of parental discipline, the failure of child protective services to intervene earlier, and the role of bystanders who hear but do not act. The woman who heard the child screaming called 911. She may have saved the toddler's life.

Turn down the lights, put on your headphones, and press play because the woman who heard a child screaming in a Walmart bathroom did what too many people fail to do. She picked up the phone.

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