Terr,

I didnt really read it close enough to see if he was an only child or not.

Regardless, the situation should be investigated. If there are no other children in the household, it just is not quite as imperative to have the investigation move quickly. If there were other children, well, you have to move fast in order to protect them, if in fact they actually need to be protected.

I am not saying that the parents were definitely wrong in this case. It is always possible that the kid simply fell into the wrong crowd, or had a chemical imbalance which the parents were not capable of noticing(though when a kid does something like this, there are almost always some real signs that something is "not right" about the kid).