Mother faces prison time for severe child abuse
Seven-year-old girl was beaten, burned, malnourished and stomped by her mother, court hears at Monday sentencing hearing
Warning: This story includes graphic descriptions of severe child abuse.
Burned with pieces of hot metal. Hair torn from her scalp. Beaten all over her body. Locked in a room all day and forced to soil herself.
The seven-year-old’s head was stomped on, and when she regurgitated what little food she was given, she was forced to pick it up and eat it again.
It didn’t happen in a warzone halfway around the world, or in a poverty-stricken slum in an American metropolis. And it wasn’t the handiwork of a sadistic kidnapper or human trafficker.
The abuse was inflicted on this innocent child on the southside of Fredericton, by none other than the girl’s own mother.
The 34-year-old woman appeared in Fredericton provincial court in custody Monday for her sentencing hearing on serious charges of child abuse.
There’s a court-ordered publication ban on any information that would tend to identify her children, so the Fredericton Independent isn’t identifying the offender or her husband.
The woman admitted in February to aggravated assault on one daughter by wounding her and an assault with a weapon (a metal rod) on the same child, both between June 24 and July 21.
She also pleaded guilty to failure to provide the necessaries of life and endangering the girl’s health, namely by not seeking medical care for the daughter’s injuries, and to unlawful confinement of the same child, both between Jan. 1 and July 21, 2022.
Finally, the mother of six admitted to two indictable assaults on two of her other children, both between Jan. 1 and July 21, 2022.
Father called the cops
Prosecutor Gwynne Hearn said the Crown and defence had prepared an agreed statement of facts to be filed with the court, though she noted the defendant had declined to sign the document.
However, the offender did acknowledge the statement was accurate.
Hearn told Judge Natalie LeBlanc on Monday that while social workers with the Department of Social Development were involved with the family, the case came to the attention of the city police force as a result of a 911 call at 12:51 a.m. July 21.
The prosecutor said a man met the officer in a residential driveway and informed him that his wife “‘is crazy,’ and that he was concerned for his daughter’s safety.”
The father reported the then-seven-year-old girl was sick and hurt, court heard, and he wanted her to be examined by medical personnel.
The officer entered the home, Hearn said, and proceeded to the girl’s bedroom.
“The room smelled strongly of urine,” she said, adding the officer noticed the girl’s bed was soiled and that in addition to a couple of mattresses piled on top of one another, there was a broken box spring.
The bed consisted of “protruding springs, a torn blanket and a dirty pillow,” the prosecutor said, noting the girl was hiding under the mattresses and soiled blanket.
The officer was able to coax her out from under the pile eventually, Hearn said, and she was “noticeably underweight.”
Horrific injuries
Furthermore, court heard, the police officer saw her right ear was extremely swollen, with tissue sticking out about 3½ inches from the ear. The child was covered in bruises, marks and scars, Hearn said.
The officer asked the girl what happened to her ear.
“She initially stated, ‘I fell,’” the prosecutor said, adding the child eventually admitted, “It was my mom.”
The officer took the girl to the Dr. Everett Chalmers Regional Hospital, court heard.
When emergency-room nurse Vanessa Poirier examined the seven-year-old girl that night, Hearn said, she reported it was the worst case of child abuse she’d seen in her seven years in the ER.
The girl told the nurse, “My mommy hit me,” the prosecutor said. “My mom burned me.”
The nurse was shocked at the number of bruises and marks on the child’s body, notably on her backside.
The girl "also advised Ms. Poirier that she only eats one meal a day and that she is forced to use the bathroom in her pants," the prosecutor said.
ER chief Dr. Graeme Young assessed the girl at 1:49 a.m. and noted her right ear required emergency reconstructive surgery, the prosecutor said, and ear nose and throat specialist Dr. Benjamin Hoyt saw her hours later to examine her severely injured ear.
“He had never seen an auricular hematoma as severe as [the girl’s],” Hearn said.
The doctor described the injury like an inflated water balloon, she said, and when he drained it, the blood and blood clots contained therein were significant.
A social worker attended the hospital that day and told the parents their children were being taken into the care of the Department of Social Development and that they’d have no contact with their kids, the prosecutor said.
‘Her mind changed, and I don’t know why’
The next day, court heard, Fredericton police Det. Nancy Rideout conducted forensic interviews with the couple’s children.
The then-seven-year-old girl told the officer the abuse had begun when she was five years old, Hearn said, and she didn’t know why she’d been singled out.
“Her mother hits her everywhere on her body,” the prosecutor said, relaying what the child told police.
“Her mother also burns her with a long, silver stick.”
The defendant would also smash the girl’s head into the walls of her bedroom, leaving holes in the drywall.
“She used to be nice to me when I was little, but her mind changed, and I don’t know why,” the seven-year-old told Rideout. “There is something wrong.”
The older and younger siblings all reported that their seven-year-old sister was severely abused by their mother, Hearn said. They would hear the mother beating her, and that the abuse usually happened when their father was outside the home at work.
One of the children, then 12, took pictures of the seven-year-old’s ear and showed it to her father, the prosecutor said, and the father then asked friends over for coffee and showed them the injuries.
The 12-year-old reported that when the friends and the father asked the defendant how she could treat her daughter in such a manner, “Her mother just laughed and said it is her child and she will do what she wants.”
The children told Rideout the mother forced the seven-year-old to sleep on “a metal bed,” with the mattress on top of her with only a small opening through which to breathe, court heard.
They said their mother would assault their sister with hot metal rods, a broomstick, belts, a shoe and a boot, Hearn said.
Court heard the mother would beat the girl if she caught her sneaking out of her room to use the bathroom, but she’d also beat her if she soiled her pants.
Forced to eat vomit
The victim’s nine-year-old brother told Rideout his sister “is not allowed to have water,” Hearn said, so she’d have to sneak some at night.
The prosecutor also noted that the other children reported that their mother would only feed her a single egg a day, and that it was salted so much that it was disgusting and their sister would sometimes throw it up.
When that happened, they said, their mother would make the seven-year-old pick up the vomit and eat it.
The girl’s brothers would sneak some food to her at night when they could, Hearn said.
One brother told Rideout the girl “states her mother has hit [her] about 1,000 times,” and she reported that her mother would stomp on her head, exacerbating the injury to her ear.
“[She] isn’t allowed to go outside and play and doesn’t really know how to play right,” one brother, then nine years old, told Rideout.
After interviewing the children, police executed a search warrant at the family’s home, the prosecutor said, and among the items they seized were a broken metal broomstick, metal rods with burnt tips, leather belts, a broken wooden handle “and a bag of human hair.”
The latter stemmed from reports that the mother would yank the child’s hair right out of her scalp, court heard.
Hearn noted police learned the woman also assaulted two of her other children - her eight- and nine-year-old sons, striking them several times, but that abuse wasn’t anywhere as severe as what the seven-year-old endured.
After all those disturbing facts were relayed to the court, the mother, sitting in the courtoom prisoner’s dock, acknowledged Monday with casual nods of her head that she committed the offences listed in the charges, and she smiled slightly when the judge asked if she was confirming she was pleading guilty voluntarily.
Determining a fit prison sentence
Hearn argued for a prison term of 8½ years, less credit for the time the woman spent on remand since her arrest last summer.
She said there are numerous aggravating factors in the case, not the least of which were the horrific assaults inflicted on the girl and the neglect of her injuries.
That the victims are children is a statutory aggravating factor as well, the prosecutor said, and a lengthy prison term was necessary to denounce the crimes and to deter others from perpetrating similar acts in the future.
“For whatever reason, [the seven-year-old] was targeted for prolonged and severe acts,” Hearn described the crimes as “calculated, repetitive and unprovoked.”
There were mitigating factors to consider, she acknowledged, such as the offender’s guilty pleas and lack of a prior criminal record.
The prosecutor asked the court to issue a mandatory order for a sample of the woman’s DNA, forfeiture of the weapons seized, a ban on possessing firearms and other weapons for 10 years, and an order barring the offender from having any contact with her children during her time in prison.
“This is a case where a mother has abused her child quite harshly,” said defence lawyer T.J. Burke, but he urged the court to consider who the woman is and what drove her ugly but bizarre behaviour.
He noted she has only a Grade 6 education, married at 19 and was essentially the sole caretaker of six young children.
“She had come to a breaking point of stress and anxiety and depression,” Burke said, adding the unsophisticated woman didn’t even realize she was suffering from mental illness.
His client needed help, support and counselling, he said, noting she didn’t know where to get it or even that she could get it.
As Burke described her background, the woman wept and grabbed handfuls of tissues to wipe away her tears.
She stood and apologized for her actions, noting she wants to see her children.
Burke pushed for a 6½-year prison sentence, reduced to account for her remand credit.
Given the complexity of the case, the significant jurisprudence cited by the Crown and defence, and the difference in their positions on sentence, LeBlanc reserved her decision on sentence to June 28, and remanded the offender again until that time.
Her 52-year-old husband attended Monday’s sentencing hearing, but he said nothing, as he’s subject to a court order not to communicate with his wife or their kids.
The children weren’t present in court Monday and remain in the care of Social Development.
The father also faces criminal charges stemming from the same police investigation, though he’s free on conditions.
He’s similarly accused of failing to provide the necessaries of life to his daughter and thereby causing her bodily harm July 21, as well as violating a police undertaking to have no contact with his six children between July 30 and 31.
He pleaded not guilty to those charges and is set to stand trial later this year.
You can contact Don MacPherson at ftonindependent@gmail.com.
I'm so sick and tired of people using "mental illness" as an excuse to do horrible things to people, especially children, and get away with it. She needs to be locked up in a prison for life with no parole ever. She should never be free when her daughter will be tormented with the memory of what happened to her for the rest of her life!
This is disgusting. Did this child go to school? Why did the father do nothing in two years? Why didn't he kick her out and protect his kids? Did she not have any relatives? Why did his friends do nothing? Social services fail her. How could they not know if they were working with the family? A lot is wrong with all of it. Now theses poor kids will need a life time of counseling and are scarred because no one did anything. They should all be charged.