I don’t ask for perfection from parents, just that they take responsibility when they do fail.

You’re being silly. Of course I can have and do have ideas about what she’s thinking. Of course I can make assumptions. Maybe I’m wrong, but like parents who don’t keep 100% of their attention on their children, I’m only human after all.

I’ve said this in other replies, I’ll say it again. What angers me is not the situation, but her response. She doesn’t care about the gorilla, she shrugs the whole thing off (“accidents happen”). She didn’t learn anything from this and takes zero responsibility for it. If she had said, Gosh, you know, I looked away for a minute, I feel so bad that the gorilla had to be shot, I’m just really sorry about all of this, I’m a good parent, but I made a mistake… etc. She doesn’t. She just tells us it’s all part of god’s plan and he’s so awesome and she does watch her kids.

Anyway, I’d put money on her being glued to her phone when the whole thing went down. But that’s just an assumption based on observing all people everywhere. We’ll never know, because she’s not willing to own up to any wrong doing or error — and because she hired of professional PR firm to handle it all from here on.

But yeah, take the side of someone who can’t even muster a “sorry, I screwed up.”