“My father will kill me,” the teen told the educator at his school in October 2021 when he was asked to lift his shirt.
He had been complaining his back hurt, but he didn’t want to lift his shirt so they could see his back. When he finally did, the horror the teen and his sisters had been living through was finally revealed.
“The oldest girl said it had been going on for years. He said it had been going on ‘for a while,’” said Assistant District Attorney Amber Brantley of the Columbia County Judicial Circuit.
Brantley handled the sentencing of the children’s mother on Dec. 20. Judge J. Wade Padgett allowed the woman to enter an Alford plea – which is not an admission of guilty but acknowledgement of sufficient evidence for conviction – but Padgett rejected her request to be sentenced under the First Offender Act. That would have enabled the woman to have the crime wiped from her record.
The father was the one who administered the “discipline,” defense and prosecuting attorneys told Padgett. But the mother encouraged it, telling him she wanted “to watch him bleed.”
All of the children were beaten with belts or whatever was handy, Brantley told The Augusta Press. They never told until that October day in 2021 because the parents said they would kill them.
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In court Dec. 20, Padgett looked at the photographs of the teen’s back. Although the photograph had been taken weeks if not months after the last beating, Padgett noted he could count 17 distinctive slash marks, some of which were still open wounds. They covered the child’s back from the waistband of his pants to his shoulder blades, Padgett said.
The teen said he would feel the blood running down his back, said Brantley, the prosecutor.
The mother’s attorney stressed that it was the father who did the beating and that she had no criminal history. She insisted she didn’t know the extent of her child’s injuries.
It was her job to protect this child, Padgett said to the woman. Her children will have emotional scars. He couldn’t imagine the level of hopelessness and despair they endured.
“You could have stopped that,” he told the mother.
The study of adverse childhood events is still an evolving body of information, said Dr. Eric Lewkowiez, child and adolescent psychiatrist at MCG and the Children’s Hospital of Georgia.
The immediate harm of child abuse and neglect has been known for decades.
“(But) We didn’t know about the downstream affect,” Dr. Lewkowiez said.
It can lead to genetic illness, like schizophrenia, even if no one else in the family has been diagnosed with that illness. Scientists have learned that some genes don’t activate unless there’s a traumatic event in a person’s environment, an adverse childhood event.
Scientists have also discovered abuse and neglect can also affect the brain chemistry and how the brain develops, according to published works about the studies at Child Welfare website, a clearinghouse of information. The effect called toxic stress, which can interfere with a person’s ability to respond to nurturing and kindness, and impact the development of normal learning, socialization and emotional functioning.
But children can recover from the impact of abuse and neglect, Dr. Lewkowiez said. All abused and neglected children are not affected in the same way. What gives every child, especially those abused or neglected by their parents or guardians, a better chance at recovery is having at least one person who can be a stable influence in their lives, Dr. Lewkowiez said.
Every child needs someone he can trust and depend on, be it a parent, teacher, minister, coach or neighbor or parent of a friend, he said. You can most help a child in need by being the one who helps him feel safe and stable, Dr. Lewkowiez said.
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As for the mother sentenced Dec. 20 for her role in her son’s abuse, Judge J. Wade Padgett accepted the plea agreement that limited the sentence to five to 10 years in prison with a period of probation to follow. Padgett sentenced her to 10 years in prison followed by five years on probation. She cannot have any contact with the victim or any unsupervised contact with any other child.
Her husband – who it was discovered had been molesting a child and documenting it with photographs – pleaded guilty Nov. 8 in federal court to production of child pornography. He is facing a prison term of 15 to 30 years, which will be served without the possibility of parole.
In 2020, there were 110,227 calls about possible child abuse or neglect in the United States. A total of 62,675 of those reports were investigated. In Georgia, 8,690 victims were reported.
According to the Georgia Child Fatality report for 2019, the most recent available, 60 children committed suicide that year and another 55 were victims of homicide.
To report suspected child abuse in Georgia, call (855) 422-4453 or write cps.dhs.ga.gov
To find help, call (855) 244-5373 or go to the website FindHelpGA.org
Sandy Hodson is a staff reporter covering courts for The Augusta Press. Reach her at sandy@theaugustapress.com.
