Nurse Testifies Boy's Burns Were Severe

Tulsa World

Author: Patti Weaver; World Correspondent

STILLWATER - A Cushing nurse testified Friday she could not forget the screams of a 4-year-old boy whose foster mother is accused of scalding his feet and lower legs with hot water.

"He was crying `Please, please, take me out of the water,' " when he was brought into Cushing Regional Hospital emergency room at 11:30 p.m. Feb. 2, 1993, Dorothy Flaherty testified.

Flaherty, who said she has been a licensed nurse for 19 years, said "the burns on his feet - I couldn't forget them - the skin was peeling off."

Her testimony came in the second day of the trial of Anita June Franklin, 43, of Cushing, who for four months was the foster mother of Justin Fields. If convicted of abusing him, Franklin could receive life in prison.

The Department of Human Services placed Justin in foster care because his mother was in prison and his father could not take care of him, prosecutor Beth Pauchnik said.

At the hospital the night Justin was burned, Franklin told her, "he was taking a bath. She said he said the water was cold. She said he turned on the hot water and started screaming," Flaherty testified.

Dr. Steven Wiseman, the Cushing emergency room physician who first treated Justin, told the jury Friday he does not believe Justin burned himself.

"If he was standing, running water, he wouldn't have let it get that hot . . . he had circumference burns - the water would have been rising," Wiseman testified.

Justin, who was incoherent much of the time from pain, used the words, "He did it. She did it. Nita did it," Wiseman testified.

Sac and Fox Indian Tribal Police Investigator Glenn Gillespie testified that in the emergency room, Justin told him, "She put me in the tub and the water was hot."

DHS child welfare worker Gloria Wilson testified that she saw no indication of a problem in the foster home when she visited on two occasions in December and January.

Wilson testified that Franklin explained the burns by saying, "He had messed himself and all his clothes. She put him in the bathtub. She heard a splash. She said she found him completely under the water."

DHS child welfare supervisor Marilyn Rainwater, who investigated the burning of Justin, testified Franklin told her she found Justin lying on his back in water.

Roberta Wilson, a burn nurse specialist for Children's Hospital of Oklahoma where Justin was treated for more than a month, testified there were no burns on Justin's back.

Wilson testified she believes Justin had immersion burns caused when "a person is placed or held in water by another person."

She also testified that Justin had marks on his body that "appeared to be old cigarette burns."

The jury of seven women and five men was told that both Justin and Franklin will testify at the trial, which resumes Monday. It may go to the jury Tuesday, the prosecutor said.

"Witnesses will testify that Mrs. Franklin does nothing but love children," defense lawyer Phil Corley said in his opening statement.

Franklin has two adopted children, ages 6 and 13, one from Peru and the other a Sac and Fox Indian, Corley said. She also was a foster mother for two Sac and Fox Indian children at the time Justin was in her home, he said.