Abuse admissions leave feelings mixed in town

Feelings in this rural, northern Utah farming community were mixed after Chris and Becky Tucker admitted to starving and neglecting their 6-year-old adopted daughter.

Chris Tucker pleaded guilty to second-degree felony child abuse Wednesday, and his wife pleaded guilty to a third-degree child abuse charge in a case that shook the community.The Tuckers were accused of locking their adopted daughter in a concrete basement with only a tub of murky water and bare bedsprings.

When a state investigator, responding to a tip from a friend, found the girl she weighed only 31 1/2 pounds. She had trouble standing upright and could take only a few steps on her own. Her hair was full of lice, her poorly developed teeth were nubs and her skeletal body was covered with bruises and burn-like lesions.

Many of the Tuckers' friends and neighbors, however, remain supportive.

"We're still 100 percent behind the Tuckers," said Loren Christensen, a neighbor of the Tuckers.

Christensen said the case was blown out of proportion.

"Every parent makes mistakes," he said. "The things they did were wrong, but they were nothing more than misdemeanors."

"That little girl was not locked up," said Florene Jensen, another neighbor. "A week before this whole thing happened she was out riding horses."

But Lynn Mangum of nearby Richmond - a friend of the Tuckers even before they moved to Utah from Coldwater, Mich., - is happy the girl is safe. It was Mangum who reported the abuse to authorities.

Mangum's husband met the Tuckers on an Internet chat line and after visiting Utah the Tuckers decided to move to Trenton. The families made the drive together in October 1996. That was when the Mangums first noticed problems.

Mangum said the Tuckers kept the girl strapped into her car seat for the entire trip without food or water. She also was not allowed to use the bathroom, she said.

"They'd stop and let their dogs out to pee, but not her," she said.

She said that even after arriving in Utah, they left the girl in wet, soiled clothes for several days.

When Mangum offered the girl food, the Tuckers got angry and refused to spend the night in the Mangum home. Instead, they stayed in their new home, which did not have electricity or heat.

At a preliminary hearing, Lynn Mangum testified the last time she saw the girl was Christmas 1996, when she could only watch her siblings opening gifts. The girl told Mangum she didn't get any because she had been naughty.

It was nearly a year later - after being told she could not see the girl during several visits to the Tuckers - that she called authorities.

Assistant Attorney General Karl Perry said the girl, now 7, and her 4-year-old half-sister will be put up for adoption. As part of the plea bargain, the Tuckers relinquished parental rights to the girls.

Chances are both girls will be adopted into the same foster home where they have lived since leaving a Logan shelter last fall, Perry said.