Foster mother in Hillsborough gets 15 years for slaying child

St. Petersburg Times

Author: JOHN D. McKINNON

TAMPA - Rosa Lee Jones, described as a near-fanatical fundamentalist Christian, was sentenced to 15 years in prison Friday for beating one of her foster children to death when he refused to say his evening prayers.

Mrs. Jones, 40, reportedly smashed 5-year-old Albert Jones twice with a board on the evening of Jan. 8 in a bedroom of her Clair Mel home. Each blow fractured part of the boy's skull, doctors said. He died a few hours later at a Brandon hospital.

Mrs. Jones' adopted daughter suffered a severe chest injury in 1985. The injury was caused by ''a major trauma, nothing short of an automobile accident or actions generating similar force,'' according to a child abuse expert who examined medical evidence. The expert said in a special background report on Mrs. Jones that he was ''extremely concerned'' about the possibility that the injury was the result of child abuse.

The same girl suffered a broken arm two years later. She recently told state child welfare workers that Mrs. Jones inflicted the injury, although she also has blamed a sibling.

Another child in the home suffered a broken leg that also drew concern from the child abuse expert, who was not fully identified in the report.

The brother of the 5-year-old victim told state workers that he ''likes where he is now in shelter care because he doesn't get hit and beat all the time,'' according to the report.

Circuit Judge Harry Lee Coe III read aloud from parts of the confidential report before announcing his sentence.

Based in part on the new evidence in the report, Coe chose to hand down the maximum possible sentence, 15 years. Coe cited the extreme brutality of the beating, as well as the continuing threat Mrs. Jones poses to other children. Defense attorney Jack Edmund noted that Mrs. Jones was not conclusively tied to any of the injuries to other children, however.

State sentencing guidelines called for Mrs. Jones to receive three to seven years in prison. Prosecutors and Edmund suggested a five-year prison sentence followed by 10 years of probation.

Mrs. Jones pleaded guilty to manslaughter after being charged originally with second-degree murder.

Licensed as a foster parent in 1979, she had begun to show overt signs of inability to cope with the pressures of the job in recent months, according to state records. She complained to state Health and Rehabilitative Services (HRS) officials about stress a few weeks before Albert's death, records showed. Her foster home had been overcrowded on several occasions.

Mrs. Jones had no reaction to the sentence. ''She's as surprised as I am,'' Edmund said later.