Torture earns unrepentant Carrick mom stiff sentence

Torture earns unrepentant Carrick mom stiff sentence

By David Conti
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Thursday, February 2, 2006

Haley Liberman still loves her adoptive mother, the woman who poured bleach down the little girl's back, beat her with a dog chain and locked her in a coal cellar.

That just makes the torture Debra Liberman inflicted on the child, and the mother's lack of remorse, all the more heinous, an Allegheny County judge said Wednesday.

"Haley's love for you was so strong, and yours so weak," Common Pleas Judge Donna Jo McDaniel told Liberman before sending the Carrick woman to prison for what could be the rest of her life. "Nothing in this case leads me to believe you're a candidate for rehabilitation."

Liberman, 52, was sentenced to 25 to 70 years in prison for the February 2004 attack on the girl, now 9 and living with her adoptive father in Virginia.

"I'm so ashamed of what I was capable of doing," Liberman, heaving with sobs, told McDaniel before the sentence was announced.

Deputy District Attorney Laura Ditka said Liberman deserved the harsh sentence because she continued to attempt to avoid responsibility for the assault.

"To blame everything on something else leads the commonwealth to believe she is unfit to be in society," Ditka said.

A jury in October rejected Liberman's defense that she had attacked Haley while suffering from a drug-induced psychosis brought on by a mixture of allergy medications and depression. The jury acquitted her of attempted murder, but convicted her of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, arson, unlawful restraint and endangering the welfare of a child.

Haley, who did not appear in court yesterday, spent 11 days in a hospital and has scars on her back from the bleach.

Defense attorneys Sumner Parker and Todd Hollis called the sentence "inappropriate" and said another lawyer will appeal the conviction.

"If she knew she was doing it, she wouldn't have done it," Hollis said, referring to Liberman's testimony during the trial that she did not remember most of the attack.

Liberman's ex-husband, Daniel Liberman, who now cares for the couple's two children, asked McDaniel to allow Haley to see her mother in prison.

"She owes Haley an apology of the proper type," Daniel Liberman said after the hearing, adding that Haley "still feels guilty. She blames herself for making Mommy mad."

McDaniel lifted an order that barred Debra Liberman from contacting Haley, but said the state Department of Corrections would decide whether she could see her.

"She intends to make an apology, but that will be communicated directly to Haley," Parker said.

David Conti can be reached at dconti@tribweb.com or 412-320-7981.