Parents are charged with felony abuse - "The Spider House"

Salt Lake Tribune, The (UT)

Parents are charged with felony abuse

"The spider house":

A Roy boy, 7, allegedly was beaten and sent to an unheated shed in winter and given rotten food to eat; Parents charged with felony abuse

Author: Ashley Broughton; The Salt Lake Tribune

A Roy couple are facing felony charges for allegedly beating their 7-year-old adopted son, feeding him rotten food and forcing him to spend most of his time nearly naked on an unheated basement staircase, police said.

Scott L. Nelson, 32, a former Salt Lake County corrections officer, and his wife, Catherine Kanani Nelson, 27, are each charged with one count of child abuse or neglect, a second-degree felony.

Ogden attorney Gary Barr, who represents the Nelsons, said his clients "made bad judgments, and I do believe they abused this child, but I don't believe it's as bad as it's been portrayed."

Roy Police Chief Greg Whinham, however, said: "There's no doubt in my mind, without some intervention, this child would have died."

The boy and his 3-year-old sister were from Samoa and were adopted through an out-of-state private agency in February 2003, officials said. The girl apparently was treated well, Whinham said -- "there were two very different lifestyles."

The boy apparently spent most of his time on a 4-by-4-foot landing on a staircase leading into an unheated, unfinished basement with a concrete floor, Whinham said. "There were no blankets, no pillows, no comfort or clothing for the child." The Nelsons told a DCFS worker he was allowed to leave to go to the bathroom.

The child was not allowed to eat with the family and when he was given food at all, he was given "concoctions that were just putrid," Whinham said.

For discipline, he was put in an outdoor tin shed, naked or clad only in his underwear, in winter.

"He calls it 'the spider house' because it's so awful and has so many spiders," said DCFS spokeswoman Carol Sisco.

The boy's toes and fingers showed the beginning stages of frostbite, Whinham said, and he also appeared to have been physically abused.

"What we've been told," Sisco said, "is that the parents just didn't like him much."

Both children were removed from the home on the same day the DCFS report was made in February 2004, she said. Charges were filed later that month. Sisco said the children are "doing remarkably well" at a Weber County shelter.

Barr contends the boy was not in imminent danger of dying, his blood work showed no signs of malnutrition and his weight was in the 75th percentile for his age.

The Nelsons' attorney said the boy was not forced to eat rotten food, saying a school worker reported the bread used to make his peanut butter sandwich was stale and said the peanut butter "didn't look right . . . He had already eaten his cookies and chips."

The child was not locked in the outdoor shed, he said. "They did send him out there for 'time out' after he defecated in his pants -- in the winter, which I agree was totally wrong . . .. This happened more than once."

He was also sent to the landing for time out, and slept there on a couple of occasions, "which was wrong," Barr said.

"They are very remorseful. In hindsight, honestly I don't know what they were thinking when they did it. The bottom line is, they've lost their children and they're not getting them back."

Scott Nelson resigned from Salt Lake County after charges were filed, Whinham said. Since the children had been removed from the home, the couple were not arrested but instead issued a court summons, Whinham said. A preliminary hearing is set for April 28 before 2nd District Judge W. Brent West.

aebroughton@sltrib.com