International pepper sauce incident
By Scott Christiansen
An Anchorage mom who appeared on the Dr. Phil TV show last fall is being prosecuted by the city for misdemeanor child abuse as a result of the videotaped discipline techniques featured on the tabloid TV program. Jessica Beagley, 35, was shown on video forcing a 7-year-old boy, her adopted child, to rinse his mouth with hot sauce while Beagley screamed in the boy’s face. Beagley has also become somewhat notorious in the Russian Federation, where the hot-sauce discipline has become a small part of a larger news story involving international adoption, child abuse and homicide at the hands of adoptive American parents, and two former superpowers trying to restart a relationship regarding adoption that’s been put on hold by the Russians while some of their leaders demand a treaty be signed.
“They’ve been frozen,” Andrey Cherkasov says of the adoptions of Russian children to parents in the United States. Cherkasov is a bureau chief for Channel One Russia, the country’s largest TV news provider. He was in Anchorage Monday chasing the story’s Alaska angle. Adoptions to the United States were halted in 2010, potentially affecting thousands of U.S. families. Three deaths led up to the negotiations, according to an April 2010 report from MSNBC. Cherkasov, who is based in Washington D.C., says the two governments have been trying to solve the problem “They are negotiating at the level of the State Department,” he says.
Beagley’s punishment technique, which was recorded on video by a sibling, was shown on television and on the Dr. Phil website on November 17. Detective Leonard Torres of the Anchorage Police Department began an investigation the same day, according to a written statement from Torres filed in the case against Beagley. “The video has sound and anyone watching the video can hear [the child] screaming in pain,” the detective’s statement says.
Beagley’s attorney William Ingaldson says his client won’t talk with news reporters. “I’ve advised her not to,” Ingaldson says. The Press first reported the hot sauce incident one week after the Dr. Phil program aired, suspecting readers might be interested in knowing what compels people to air their family problems on tabloid TV programs in the first place. Ingaldson had no answer for that, and called the shows “exploitive” during a brief conversation. “Obviously she regrets any of this publicity and things can be taken really out of context,” Ingaldson says. “There is no evidence of any permanent harm to any of her kids.”
Ingaldson says the actions shown on the video do not fit the definition of child abuse found in Anchorage city code.
Beagley could spend up to one year in prison and be fined up to $10,000 if found guilty. A defense in such cases may be launched by arguing the incident was “reasonable parental discipline,” and the law lists factors—the child’s age, the degree of harm to the child and the motive of the parent are among them—that must be considered to determine if a specific incident was reasonable.
The Beagley family adopted a pair of Russian twins about two years ago. A Russian diplomat was en route to Anchorage from Seattle on Monday to visit the family and investigate an Anchorage-based adoption agency, according to a report on the website for Voice of Russia radio. (The boys have dual citizenship, so the hot sauce incident is now an international incident.)
The city does have a family violence intervention program, but prosecutor Cynthia Franklin says it is not available to people accused of child abuse in cases where the parent is disciplining the child. The program is intended for batterers, Franklin says, and would not be a good fit for a mother facing charges such the misdemeanor Beagley faces. Franklin says the Russian consul has not yet contacted her office, but she expects they will. Beagley is scheduled to be arraigned, but won’t likely attend the hearing in person. She has filed a consent form to allow for the court to proceed without her. Franklin says that will only allow her to be absent from certain hearings. If the case goes to trial Beagley will be required to attend, Franklin says.
Both Jessica Beagley and her husband Gary, who is an APD patrol officer, appeared on the episode of Dr. Phil that featured the video of Jessica screaming at the boy. Some members of Phil McGraw’s studio audience were in tears, according to the show’s website. On the video portraying the family’s story online, the audience can be heard booing and jeering when Beagley is introduced. Scenes such as that—fifteen seconds of shame doled out by an audience that sounds like a vengeance-seeking mob—have become the peculiar trademark of tabloid TV, something the genre seems to do better, and a lot more often, than perhaps any other in media.
Jessica Beagley reacted to the hubbub as if she had seen it coming. “That’s why I’m here,” as told the audience, as if their verbal tirades were some kind of therapy.