Woman sentenced to 9 years in child abuse case
October 9, 2009 - 12:09am
Kate Ryan, WTOP.com
GERMANTOWN, Md. - A Silver Spring woman's attorney concedes that "bad things" happened in defendant's home.
Prosecutors call it a case of "child torture."
Now 48-year-old Hyacinth Morgan will spend nine years in jail after pleading guilty to abusing her adopted daughter.
According to court documents, that abuse included locking an 11-year-old in a laundry room, forcing her to use a bucket for a toilet, and beating her with extension cords reinforced with duct tape.
Morgan was silent as her defense attorney, Richard Finci, showed numerous slides and videos of the girl and her two sisters, dressed in party clothes, enjoying a swim in the family's backyard pool.
But Finci said the girl, adopted from an orphanage in Colombia, was increasingly defiant and difficult. And while he said "bad things" were done to her, that his client regrets, he painted a picture of a woman struggling to deal with a difficult child.
Finci also painted a portrait of a woman who wanted to make a warm home; a woman who had been abused as a child in her native Jamaica.
That characterization was heatedly denied by the defendant's sister, who told those in the courtroom that Hyacinth was lying, that there was no abuse and that "She has to be stopped...someone will get killed."
Prosecutors planned to have the woman testify, but the judge refused to include that testimony.
Assistant Montgomery County Attorney Deborah Feinstein pointed out that Morgan was estranged from her adult daughter, who at one point, had been taken from her because of Morgan's abuse.
Feinstein said Morgan restricted the girl's diet, saying she was overweight. At one point, the girl was punished for resorting to eat bird food.
Feinstein displayed photos of the home, but the images were not the cozy portrait offered by the defense.
Instead, Feinstein showed how Morgan had installed cameras so she could monitor her adopted daughter's movements. Feinstein showed photos of a door that had been damaged and patched with some plywood. She explained the door was damaged when an angry Morgan was trying to get to the girl, who had locked herself in the laundry room to avoid a beating. Morgan sawed through the door, and then punished the child for her actions.
After that episode, Feinstein says Morgan changed the locks on the doors so the girl couldn't lock herself in, but also could not get out.
In June 2008, the girl did manage to escape.
During a thunderstorm, power to the house went out. Noticing the sensors on the windows in the laundry room were off, prosecutors say she made her escape.
Running to a local shopping center in her socks, in the rain, she found a grocery store that was closed. She then went to a nearby fast food restaurant where a manager called the police.
After hours of detailed testimony, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Durke Thompson sentenced Morgan to 15 years, with all but nine suspended. She will also be put on supervised probation for five years after her release.
(Copyright 2009 by WTOP. All rights reserved.)
Kate Ryan, WTOP.com
GERMANTOWN, Md. - A Silver Spring woman's attorney concedes that "bad things" happened in defendant's home.
Prosecutors call it a case of "child torture."
Now 48-year-old Hyacinth Morgan will spend nine years in jail after pleading guilty to abusing her adopted daughter.
According to court documents, that abuse included locking an 11-year-old in a laundry room, forcing her to use a bucket for a toilet, and beating her with extension cords reinforced with duct tape.
Morgan was silent as her defense attorney, Richard Finci, showed numerous slides and videos of the girl and her two sisters, dressed in party clothes, enjoying a swim in the family's backyard pool.
But Finci said the girl, adopted from an orphanage in Colombia, was increasingly defiant and difficult. And while he said "bad things" were done to her, that his client regrets, he painted a picture of a woman struggling to deal with a difficult child.
Finci also painted a portrait of a woman who wanted to make a warm home; a woman who had been abused as a child in her native Jamaica.
That characterization was heatedly denied by the defendant's sister, who told those in the courtroom that Hyacinth was lying, that there was no abuse and that "She has to be stopped...someone will get killed."
Prosecutors planned to have the woman testify, but the judge refused to include that testimony.
Assistant Montgomery County Attorney Deborah Feinstein pointed out that Morgan was estranged from her adult daughter, who at one point, had been taken from her because of Morgan's abuse.
Feinstein said Morgan restricted the girl's diet, saying she was overweight. At one point, the girl was punished for resorting to eat bird food.
Feinstein displayed photos of the home, but the images were not the cozy portrait offered by the defense.
Instead, Feinstein showed how Morgan had installed cameras so she could monitor her adopted daughter's movements. Feinstein showed photos of a door that had been damaged and patched with some plywood. She explained the door was damaged when an angry Morgan was trying to get to the girl, who had locked herself in the laundry room to avoid a beating. Morgan sawed through the door, and then punished the child for her actions.
After that episode, Feinstein says Morgan changed the locks on the doors so the girl couldn't lock herself in, but also could not get out.
In June 2008, the girl did manage to escape.
During a thunderstorm, power to the house went out. Noticing the sensors on the windows in the laundry room were off, prosecutors say she made her escape.
Running to a local shopping center in her socks, in the rain, she found a grocery store that was closed. She then went to a nearby fast food restaurant where a manager called the police.
After hours of detailed testimony, Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Durke Thompson sentenced Morgan to 15 years, with all but nine suspended. She will also be put on supervised probation for five years after her release.