Guardians of 31-pound 6-year-old are charged

The 6-year-old girl weighed 31 pounds when an investigator found her locked in a basement room with only metal bed springs, Cache County prosecutors said.

She had lice, was dirty and had lesions on her hands and buttocks.She hadn't been seen by friends or neighbors for six months.

Monday, the girl's adoptive parents were charged with second-degree felony child abuse, the stiffest possible charge for abusing a child in Utah.

Chris and Becky Tucker voluntarily surrendered to the Cache County Sheriff's Office and were booked into jail. Bail was set at $10,000 each.

Cache County Attorney Scott Wyatt said the Tuckers asked that their bail be lowered to an amount they could afford, but his office declined. The couple must now wait in jail until a bail hearing Thursday.

Wyatt said he also plans to ask Thursday for the judge to set a preliminary hearing within the next 10 days.

The charge was appropriate "based on the severity of abuse and neglect" the 6-year-old child suffered, Wyatt said.

The 6-year-old and her 4-year-old half-sister were taken from the Tuckers Nov. 4 after Division of Child and Family Services investigator Lynn Jaggi visited the home and found the older girl with a bloated stomach and emaciated limbs in the basement room.

According to the charging documents, Becky Tucker had to call her husband and have him come home with the key to unlock the room the child was kept in. The room is only accessible from an outside entrance to the home.

Jaggi told prosecutors the 6-year-old was only wearing a T-shirt and was crouched in the fetal position. Aside from the metal bed springs, the only other thing in the room was a metal tub with dirty brown water in it.

The half-sisters were adopted by the couple in Lansing, Mich. Before moving to Utah, another of the couple's adopted children died after falling down the stairs, according to court documents.

The Tuckers said the 6-year-old was kept in the room because of her behavior and that they had tried unsuccessfully to get her help. She was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, but Wyatt said that had no bearing on her condition or treatment.

The girls have been placed in a foster home and the 6-year-old is "improving remarkably," Wyatt said.

"The primary allegation we are making is that they intentionally starved or seriously malnourished this child to the point of jeopardizing her life," Wyatt said.

After officials obtained a search warrant Nov. 4 and returned to take the girls from the home, they found the 6-year-old sitting under a tree in the back yard. Jaggi told prosecutors the basement room had been cleaned and smelled like Clorox. The child was wearing shoes several sizes too big and acted as if the sunlight was hurting her eyes, the court documents state.

When the child was taken to a shelter home, she couldn't keep down the soup given to her by officials.

Ken Patterson, DCFS director, said Utah and Michigan officials will work together to learn more about the children's adoption. Because the adoption was finalized before the family moved to Utah, they had no involvement with DCFS. But the tipster who brought the situation to authorities and Jaggi's insistence the Tuckers unlock the basement room may have saved the little girl, Patterson said.

"The child protections system worked to save the life of a child," he said.

On Monday, Wyatt asked 1st District Court Judge Gordon J. Low to appoint an attorney to represent the child's interests. Low appointed Diane Balmain, a guardian ad litem, to represent the child, an arrangement Wyatt said is "a bit unusual." But, he said, the overwhelming nature of the case is prompting prosecutors to do everything they can to help the case proceed.

Whether the child will testify at trial is unclear, but Wyatt said she most likely won't have to testify at the preliminary hearing.