Ex-Millcreek woman sentenced to 6 to 12 years in abuse of adopted children

BY TIM HAHN

A former Millcreek Township woman will spend at least six years behind bars for abusing her four adopted children.

Annissa D. Schoolfield, 41, of Cleveland, an ordained minister and former state prison guard, was sentenced Monday by Erie County Judge Shad Connelly to 18 to 36 months in jail on each of four felony charges of endangering the welfare of children. Connelly ordered that the sentences be served consecutively. An Erie County jury had convicted Schoolfield during her March trial.

The jury also had found Schoolfield guilty of four misdemeanor counts of simple assault. Those charges merged with the endangering charges.

The eight charges were among 14 that Millcreek Township police filed against Schoolfield in April 2010 after accusing her of abusing the four children at her former residence on Kates Way in the township from March 2007 to January 2010.

Allegations included that Schoolfield pulled a plastic bag over a 12-year-old girl's head and held it there until the girl collapsed, and that Schoolfield used a kitchen knife to cut the children's hands.

Schoolfield was acquitted of the most serious charge, a first-degree felony count of aggravated assault. She was also acquitted of two counts of recklessly endangering and one count of possessing an instrument of crime, and the jury was unable to reach a verdict on two other charges of recklessly endangering.

Schoolfield's lawyer, Wayne Johnson Jr., asked Connelly to consider the jury's not-guilty verdict on the aggravated assault charge, and Schoolfield's lack of a prior criminal record and her extensive education, in sentencing her.

Erie County Chief Deputy District Attorney Elizabeth Hirz argued that Schoolfield adopted the children to offer them a better life, but put them in a worse situation. She said the physical scars on the children, now 8, 10, 13 and 13, might be gone, but they will deal with the emotional scars for some time.

Connelly noted Schoolfield's lack of remorse, and the effect the abuse had on the children as stated in letters from their adoptive father and from one of the victims, in sentencing Schoolfield in the aggravated range.

He added that it is "a sad state of affairs" that the law and the community could not protect "the most helpless."

The children now live in Youngstown, Ohio, with their adoptive father, Eugene L. Schoolfield III, Annissa Schoolfield's ex-husband. Eugene Schoolfield said after the hearing that it had been a pretty emotional day for the children, but they are doing well.

"We're just thankful everything has finally come to a close and the children have been heard and believed and the healing process can officially begin," he said.