Finally, judge might listen to child's cries
RICH TOSCHES
The Colorado Springs Gazette
Here's a quick review of how we - through the lawmakers and prosecutors we've elected - have responded to child abuse in recent years:
A woman in Colorado Springs adopted a little boy. When he got older, she began torturing him with an electric shock collar. Most days and nights for five years, he was kept locked in a dark, 4- footby-4-foot closet under the stairs.
He cried a lot. He begged to be let out. He was given a bucket to urinate and defecate into. Then the woman would let him out of the dark room, maybe once a week, and make him march, often naked, past her other children to empty the bucket. Sometimes she made the boy masturbate in front of her and the other children.
In December 2001, the woman stood before a judge and said the abuse was not her fault.
She said the boy was a bad kid.
And then she was sentenced to 24 months - months, not years - in county jail. She'd been offered, and quickly accepted, a sweet deal from our district attorney in which she pleaded guilty to a couple of misdemeanor charges.
The woman's husband, who also tortured the boy, was sentenced to four years in prison. He, too, got a nice deal from our district attorney.
The DA said she offered the deals because she wasn't sure she could have gotten felony child-abuse convictions against the twisted woman and her freak of a husband.
Translation: When you've got political ambitions, you sure don't want another blemish on that all-important winloss trial record.
Footnote: During the sentencing hearing, police told of a kid who lived in the neighborhood, a friend of the little boy's brother, who told this story: "One time when I went in, he was inthe room under the stairs. He was crying.
"He said he wanted to come out and play."
The woman will get out of jail this year.
In July 2002, another woman in our village accepted a plea agreement from our DA.
She'd spent months flameheating quarters until they glowed, then pressing the coins against the skin of her screaming grandson. He was 6.
She also burned the little boy with a barbecue lighter and scalded him with steam. When the boy's wounds began to heal, the grandmother from hell would rip off the scabs. She choked him until he passed out. She stuffed him into a small dog cage for days at a time.
Because of the deal with the DA - no trial means no chance for a courtroom loss - Judge Tom Kennedy could hand down a sentence of only 10 years in prison.
During sentencing he said it would have been much, much longer were it not for the DA's deal.
Footnote: The woman's defense lawyer, Cynthia Jones, asked for probation instead of prison time for the 47-year-old grandmother named Faith.
Here's what the lawyer told Judge Kennedy: "The love she felt for the children was not expressed in the correct way."
Nope. Nothing wrong with this world.
Which brings us to today.
Sometime this morning, another nightmare of a human being will stand before Judge Kennedy. Her name is Tonya. She is Faith's daughter. The mother of the burned, scorched and scalded little boy. She led some of the brutal attacks on her son. Joined her mother in the others. Tonya also took a deal from our DA, against the advice of her lawyer, in which she pleaded guilty to seven felony counts of child abuse. She faces a sentence of 10 to 224 years in prison. The judge, finally, gets to make the call. Maybe - just maybe - Tom Kennedy will hear sounds ringing in his head. Sounds of terrified children crying and begging for mercy. And maybe he'll send a message today. A message about child abuse. A message about monsters. A message about who we are.
- Rich Tosches' column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. He can be reached at 636-0226 or tosches@gazette.com