BATON ROUGE - Child advocates said they tried everything they could to help a struggling mother before she was arrested recently but the woman was too greedy to care.

Leticia Brothers, 27, was booked into jail for abuse, cruelty to juveniles, criminal neglect and encouraging neglect or delinquency in children. She was arrested after her nine children were found living in a small home with no beds. The children were forced to sleep on the floor in one room, according to the arrest affidavit filed at the jail.

Tuesday, the truancy center released information related to the case. A case worker said Brothers was offered numerous ways to turn her life around, but refused to cooperate when she realized she would be required to show how she was spending her food stamps, look for a job, quit smoking and not live with a man she was not married to.

Case worker Laurie Jackson recalled her dealings with Brothers in an interview with WBRZ reporter Brett Buffington for News 2 at 10:00 Tuesday.

Jackson said Brothers' children did not attend school and said Brothers said she did not have the money to prepare them for class.

"[She said] she did not have the money to get the childrens' birth certificates and social security cards and that's why she just kept them at home," Jackson said.

When Jackson worked with Brothers, the children were younger and there was one fewer. When Brothers was arrested, the nine children were all younger than 11.

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