FILICIDE: Wales: Manslaughter sentence as jury accepts Yvonne Freaney was under severe strain when she killed autistic son

Helen Carter : 26 May 2011

Glen Freaney, 11, was strangled by his mother, Yvonne Freaney, who then tried to kill herself. She has been cleared of murder but pleaded guilty to manslaughter. Photograph: South Wales police/PA

A woman has been cleared of murder after strangling her severely autistic son with a belt and then attempting to take her own life. She will instead be sentenced for manslaughter.
Yvonne Freaney, 49, booked into a hotel with her 11-year-old son Glen intending to kill him and then herself.
After strangling her son, Freaney was found with multiple knife wounds in a room at the Sky Plaza hotel in Rhoose, near Cardiff airport.
She left a note for one of her three other children, who also have disabilities, saying: "You may not understand what has happened but just think of it as I am finally getting rest."
The trial at Cardiff crown court heard she had been facing a lifetime of one-to-one care for her severely autistic son, who needed help dressing, washing, brushing his teeth and feeding. By the age of 11 he was not toilet trained and still wore nappies.
Glen had no verbal communication and used a computer that translated symbols he tapped out.
The court heard that Freaney and her husband, Richard, a 48-year-old former RAF officer, had been having marital problems. She had moved out of the family home and lived in hotels for about a month before killing Glen.
After friends raised the alarm police walked in to find the mother of four sitting on the bed next to her son's body. She told them: "I killed him about 36 hours ago. I tried to join him. He's in heaven now.
"Glen was severely autistic and he won't be autistic there. He'll be happy. No one else would look after him. I strangled him with my belt. I put him to sleep."
The court heard that Freaney also told police: "It is funny. He was laughing when I was strangling him. That is when I knew he was happy."
The prosecution said she had a "loving and devoted" relationship with Glen but there was enormous pressure on her and she was struggling to find a place to live.
An expert for the defence told the court she had a personality disorder based on a fear of losing her children, which meant she could not be a murderer.
She faced a murder charge but was cleared by a jury at Cardiff crown court after a day of deliberation. Freaney had admitted a charge of manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility.
She will be sentenced on 10 June
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/may/26/woman-strangles-autistic-son-freaney

FILICIDE: Manitoba: Nicole Redhead

Jaylene Sanderson-Redhead died June 29, 2009. Doctors said they found signs she had suffered long-term abuse.

A woman who, as a child, witnessed her mother kill her father is now preparing to go to prison for killing her young daughter.
The chilling tale of multi-generational family violence is playing out in a Winnipeg courtroom, and is likely to raise more questions about Manitoba's child welfare system.
Nicole Redhead, now 29, had worked as a prostitute and was addicted to crack cocaine.
In 2009, she regained custody of her toddler from CFS as she entered an aboriginal women's shelter that offers parenting courses and other supports.
But she became violent with the young girl, and one night in June, she held her hand over the girl's mouth until she stopped breathing, court was told.
She then placed the child back in her crib and put a blanket over her. She did not tell anyone about what happened except her boyfriend — via telephone, because he was in jail. The boyfriend called the shelter and told them what happened.

'Gratuitous violence'

Autopsies would later reveal dozens of bruises on the girl's body and bites on her legs. Some bruises were old, some were still forming when she died.
It was "gratuitous violence", according to Crown attorney Colleen McDuff, who asked the court Monday for a 12-year sentence.
"There is a degree of anger, malevolence, that is difficult to explain," McDuff said.
Redhead pleaded guilty last year to manslaughter but has failed to show any remorse, McDuff said.
The woman addressed the court briefly Monday. She did not apologize for the death, but instead criticized the support services offered at the shelter.
"Every time I did ask the staff for help, there was no one there to help me," Redhead said in a soft voice.
Defence lawyer Steven Brennan said the woman is unable to show remorse because she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after a horrific childhood and a series of abusive adult relationships.
At the age of nine, she saw her mother kill her father, Brennan said.
"She remembers seeing a lot of blood," he told the court.
She was put into foster care and was sexually abused at age 11, he said. Later, she turned to prostitution to make money and became addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine. The trauma has left her unable to show emotion, Brennan said, even when she feels deeply remorseful.
"This is a horrible background. Simply horrific circumstances," he said.

Defence asks for six years
Brennan asked for a sentence of five to six years, minus double credit for the time she has spent in custody since her arrest.
Chief Justice Glenn Joyal of Court of Queen's Bench has reserved decision on her sentence until mid-April.
He frequently challenged the defence's assertion that the woman deserved sympathy, and pointed to evidence that showed the woman did not participate in support programs at the shelter.
"She suffered more than most human beings should ever have to contemplate ... but at a certain point, she was given advantages," Joyal said.
"She declined the very support offered to her."
Joyal also pointed to Child and Family Services' decision to give the woman back her child "at a time when she probably ought not to have had any child near her."
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2011/03/21/man-cp-redhead-sentencing.html

FILICIDE: Ontario: Melissa Alexander convicted for manslaughter

CHRISTIE BLATCHFORD |  Feb. 14, 2011

It is a curious country, this one, that you can be convicted of killing your child and still you get to walk out of the courtroom, free as a bird.

That’s what happened on Monday at Ontario Superior Court in Toronto.

Melissa Alexander was convicted of manslaughter in the scalding death of her 19-month-old son, Miguel, who died of massive third-degree immersion burns that his mommy dearest slathered with Vaseline and cotton batting, at some point tossing some of the little boy’s sloughed-off skin into the garbage can, before she left him and his nearly three-year-old brother, Shawn, in their apartment to go shopping.
That little excursion was part of Ms. Alexander’s failure to get the baby any medical attention for what was clearly a catastrophic injury. She phoned 911 only early the next day, by which time he was dead.
Although all the evidence is that the young woman was alone with the children that whole day and probably dunked the boy into a scalding hot tub, an earlier charge of second-degree murder was dismissed by another judge after a preliminary hearing.
Ms. Alexander was committed to trial only for manslaughter, the allegation centring not on what she probably did, but on what she didn’t, that in other words she caused Miguel’s death by failing to provide what in law is called “the necessaries of life,” which includes proper medical care.
God forbid her bail should be revoked while she awaits sentencing just because of that. Heavens no.
Only the terrific, hard-nosed judge, Anne Molloy, even raised the possibility. She asked about the terms of the bail imposed when Ms. Alexander was first charged in the fall of 2007.
Crown prosecutor Barry Stagg mistakenly replied that it was “a house arrest bail,” only to be corrected by Ms. Alexander’s lawyer, Catherine Currie, who told the judge it was in fact a surety bail put up by Ms. Alexander’s grandmother.
Mr. Stagg, roused to action by the judge’s question, then suggested that if Ms. Alexander wasn’t “asked to step into custody,” then perhaps Judge Molloy ought to impose a more restrictive bail.
“Into custody? Why?” Judge Molloy asked, hopeful it appeared that the prosecutor might have an answer and at least make the case, which is just what many prosecutors would have done.
Mr. Stagg muttered weakly about “the severity of the offence,” but in the same breath admitted Ms. Alexander has “been on a bail a long time and there’s been no difficulty.”
The judge asked about Miguel’s surviving brother, and if Ms. Alexander had access to him; she doesn’t. Left with a prosecutor who seemed indifferent, a defence lawyer who was strongly arguing against jail and with no small person to protect, Judge Molloy had little room to manoeuvre.
She then asked about tightening up the bail, and Mr. Stagg suggested Ms. Alexander report in once a week to the authorities.
Ms. Currie immediately objected. Judge Molloy asked what Ms. Alexander was doing now, “on a daily basis” that would make such a condition so onerous.
Ms. Currie said Ms. Alexander “has been employed and she’s looking for a job” and exploring her educational options.
In other words, she’s doing sweet boo all, a fact which didn’t escape the judge, who arched a brow and imposed the reporting condition. Sentencing was set for April 19.
The judge found that Ms. Alexander, now 25, was the only person who “had direct knowledge of the extent of his [Miguel’s] distress”; that she lied like a rug to everybody about how it had happened (she said the baby had pulled a pot of boiling water onto himself); that she robbed him of his “last hope of survival” when she deceived his dad, Sergio Fernandes, about the extent of the injury; that Miguel would have been screaming and utterly inconsolable and that “going shopping for two hours instead of taking him to a hospital is nothing short of shocking.”
Judge Molloy said that when Ms. Alexander left to hit the mall, probably around 1 p.m. that day, it’s possible Miguel “was still screaming in agony” or possible “that his body was already going into shock and he was starting down the path towards unconsciousness. Either scenario is disturbing.”
The little guy didn’t have much of a life. He was taken into care by the Catholic Children’s Aid Society of Toronto shortly after he was born, as Mary McConville, the agency executive director, confirmed to The Globe and Mail in a recent interview. He remained in care for more than six months before being returned to Ms. Alexander, who by then had moved in with Sergio.
Theoretically, the agency was still supervising the baby at the time of his death.
Maria Fernandes, Miguel’s paternal grandmother, remembers the day he was born. “I didn’t even know she was pregnant,” she told The Globe on Monday, but then Sergio said that, “She [Ms. Alexander] doesn’t want him” and asked her to come to the hospital.
It took her 20 minutes to get down there; by then, she said, Ms. Alexander had handed him over to the CCAS. Ms. Fernandes released balloons, including a teddy bear, outside the courthouse on Monday in honour of what would have been Miguel’s fifth birthday, last Friday.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/christie-blatchford/criminal-neglect-not-enough-to-keep-mom-behind-bars/article1907148/

FILICIDE: Erika Mendieta, Ontario: Beaten tot looked like bar fight victim, Crown says

 Feb 12 2011 Peter Small

Erika Mendieta singled out her 2-year-old daughter for prolonged beatings — leaving little of her body unmarked — and must be denounced with a 10-year sentence, a prosecutor says.

In post-mortem photos, tiny Emmily Lucas “looks like she has been in a bar fight,” Allison MacPherson told a judge Friday.
“This is a case of extreme moral culpability,” MacPherson said. “It took time and energy to do this to Emmily.”
Mendieta, 34, looked on calmly in her prison-issue green sweats, her dishevelled hair contrasting to her previously neat appearance at trial.
On Jan. 17, Ontario Superior Court Justice Nola Garton found her not guilty of second-degree murder but guilty of manslaughter in Emmily’s death seven years ago.
It was another step in a case marked by controversy. Her first trial ended with a hung jury in 2009 after her ex-boyfriend, Johnny Bermudez, stunned the court by testifying he was the real killer.
Her second trial ended in another mistrial last November after the jury and Mendieta complained a former prosecutor in the case was distracting them by making faces as he sat among the spectators.
On Friday, MacPherson pointed out that on Nov. 13, 2003, Mendieta beat Emmily unconscious, severely injuring her head and spine, but didn’t call 911 until she’d gone to school to pick up her other kids.
And she never told paramedics and doctors the truth about how Emmily was hurt — claiming the girl had fallen down some stairs —thus hampering their efforts to save her, MacPherson said.
“She beat her, she abandoned her and then she lied to the very people struggling to save her life,” MacPherson said.
Defence lawyer Bob Richardson called it a tragic case, but said Mendieta is herself the product of abusive homes, first in Honduras, then in Canada.
Her first spouse and Emmily’s father, Derrick Parra, physically abused Mendieta, he said.
But she felt her life was turning for the better in the months before Emmily died. She had a new boyfriend, Bermudez, and her five other children were with her.
She brought Emmily, who had been raised since birth by her aunt and uncle, home to complete the circle. “It was the desire to include Emmily in the family that led to tragic consequences,” he said.
Noting that Mendieta is a first offender, Richardson asked the judge to impose a four- to six-year sentence.
In her victim impact statement, Blanca Parra, 18, Mendieta’s oldest daughter, said she has been doubly hurt by the death of her sister, “the best kid ever,” and her mother’s imprisonment. “I don’t know how much more I can take.”
Selena Parra, the aunt who raised Emmily and now, along with her parents, is taking care of four of Mendieta’s remaining children, told reporters no prison sentence will ever bring back the girl she regarded as a daughter.
Parra recalled the tiny tot who loved chicken soup and dressing in pink. “No one can understand the pain that I feel in my heart to see that someone could hurt such a little person.”
Derrick Parra, 35, Emmily’s biological father, admitted he had been a violent person in the past and accepted responsibility for some of the abuse Mendieta sustained.
“But I was there for my kids . . . I would never hurt my kids.”
The judge will sentence Mendieta March 2.
http://www.thestar.com/news/crime/article/937704--beaten-tot-looked-like-bar-fight-victim-crown-says

FILICIDE: Ontario: Erika Mendieta

 Megan O'Toole, January 17, 2011 

 

  Photograph by: Peter J. Thompson, National Post

 

TORONTO — Anguished cries rang out in a Toronto courtroom late Monday after Erika Mendieta was found guilty of manslaughter in the beating death of her two-year-old daughter, Emmily.

Mendieta's family, who packed the court as Justice Nola Garton handed down her lengthy verdict, sobbed as they learned the 34-year-old's fate.

"My daughter is innocent," screamed a distraught Juana Nakata, Mendieta's mother, as she exited court. "How is she going to kill my granddaughter? Never."

One of Mendieta's six children, Blanca, appeared hysterical, sobbing loudly as her father attempted to comfort her. "I lost her. I lost her," the girl cried.

Garton took nearly five hours to deliver her verdict, recounting all the evidence of a case that ended twice in separate mistrials.

While acquitting Mendieta of the higher charge of second-degree murder, citing a lack of intent to kill, Garton concluded she was guilty of manslaughter. The sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 11.

"The evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Ms. Mendieta caused the injuries that led to Emmily's death," Garton stated, noting the accused "struck Emmily a number of times in the head and body" in the incident leading to the toddler's death.

In delivering her ruling, the judge heaped scorn on Mendieta's credibility as a witness, suggesting she conspired with her boyfriend to conceal her own culpability.

Emmily died in 2003 after police found her bruised and battered body inside the home where the two-year-old lived with her mother and her boyfriend, Johnny Bermudez.

Mendieta — who listened attentively to Monday's judgment, wearing a white winter coat and with striking blond highlights colouring her dark hair — was charged with second-degree murder following a police investigation of the death, which emergency officials had immediately flagged as suspicious.

Though Mendieta suggested to paramedics that her daughter's injuries were the result of an earlier fall down the stairs, the pattern of bruising indicated multiple sources of trauma, the court heard.

Little Emmily, who was just 88 centimetres long when she died, ultimately succumbed to severe head injuries.

The judge highlighted inconsistencies in Mendieta's testimony, including the accused's recollection of the date her daughter was supposed to have fallen down the stairs. Garton also pointed to an intercepted conversation between Mendieta and Bermudez, in which the accused cried: "I didn't want her to die . . . She was a really good kid . . . I didn't mean to."

The defence has suggested Mendieta blamed herself for her child's death because she had failed to bring her to hospital right after the initial fall, but Garton cited it as evidence of her "crisis of conscience."

Mendieta's case has encountered numerous difficulties as it has worked its way through the court system.

The first mistrial was declared after Bermudez claimed responsibility for Emmily's death, testifying under the protection of the Canada Evidence Act.

Bermudez told the court he slapped and pushed the toddler, frustrated by her crying. But Bermudez was evasive on a number of points, including how often Mendieta disciplined her six children, and the Crown ultimately dismissed his testimony as not credible.

"His entire story about assaulting Emmily is a lie . . . Ms. Mendieta and Mr. Bermudez have discussed their evidence together and agreed to alter it," Garton suggested.

A second mistrial was declared after a Crown attorney allegedly made faces at Mendieta while she testified, which the judge said may have hampered the jury's ability to assess her truthfulness.

Outside court, Emmily's biological father, Derrick Parra, said he was relieved the ordeal had reached its conclusion over seven years after his daughter's death.

"It's finally over," Parra said. "My daughter can rest in peace now."

http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Mother+found+guilty+manslaughter+death+year+daughter/4122726/story.html#ixzz1C91s8dUP

Jaren Hare: Florida: Snake that killed Florida child hadn't been fed in a month

 

By Stephan Hudak | McClatchy-Tribune News Service

ORLANDO, Fla. — The pet python that strangled a 2-year-old Sumter County, Fla., girl 18 months ago hadn't been fed in about a month and had escaped its tank 10 times since its last meal — a road-kill squirrel, according to newly released documents.
Gypsy, the 8-foot-6-inch albino Burmese python, was most likely hungry when it escaped its terrarium and attacked Shaianna Hare in a crib, according to investigative documents.
A review of reports in the July 1, 2009, tragedy show that the child's mother and the mother's boyfriend had kept the snake in violation of wildlife rules and apparently could not afford to feed it.
The death spurred a statewide hunt of exotic reptiles and fueled a crackdown on the imported constrictors. But nature may have accomplished what outraged lawmakers had aimed to do — thin the snakes' numbers. Below-freezing temperatures killed pythons in South Florida wildlife areas, where the powerful constrictors have established breeding populations and threatened to tilt the balance of the fragile ecosystem, preying on birds, mammals and other native species that take refuge in swamplands.
"We can't say for certain what impact last year's cold weather had on the South Florida Burmese python population," said Joy Hill, a spokeswoman for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. "However, anecdotal information indicates that possibly 50 percent of the population may not have survived."
Permitted python-hunters captured and euthanized 13 constrictors in Florida in 2010, down from 39 in 2009, Hill said. She noted that they also found three dead pythons, the largest of which was estimated at 14 feet.
She said it was too early to say how the current cold snap has affected the snakes.
The snake attack in the rural community of Oxford, about 60 miles northwest of Orlando, was believed to be the state's first instance of a non-venomous constrictor killing a child. The criminal case, likely to be tried this year, revolves around reckless behavior of the child's caregivers, Assistant State Attorney Pete Magrino said.
"It was a tragic loss of a young life as a result of the criminal negligence and child abuse on the part of two adults. It's that simple," he said. "I don't take prosecuting parents lightly."
Shaianna's mother, Jaren Hare, 21, and Hare's boyfriend, Jason Darnell, 33, face up to 15 years in prison if convicted of manslaughter or third-degree murder. They also are charged with child abuse and have pleaded not guilty.
The albino python, bought at a flea market about six years ago for $200, slithered through the doublewide trailer to the child's room after escaping from a mesh laundry bag with a baseball-sized hole in it.
The snake had slipped out of its tank twice that night.
"It's beyond stupidity," said Jim Peters, president of the Central Florida Herpetological Society, when informed of the large snake's feeding history and its unsecured enclosure, a 150-gallon glass aquarium with a quilt as a lid.
The snake, which weighed less than 13 pounds, was emaciated, said Andrew Wyatt, president of the U.S. Association of Reptile Keepers. A healthy python of that length should have weighed at least twice as much.
"You keep it hungry and don't secure it, you're asking for trouble," Wyatt said.
The python has recovered from a cleaver wound inflicted by Darnell and is in Fish and Wildlife's custody.
According to a death investigation by the state Department of Children & Families, Hare's mother, Sheryl, was concerned about her daughter's ability to care for her pet snakes, Gypsy and Dixie, a smaller Columbian red-tail boa.
Hare told a DCF investigator that a week before the python attack she offered to buy rats for the snakes because Hare and Darnell had neither jobs nor money. She said she also had offered to keep the snakes at her home or provide a sealed container.
The offers were rejected.
According to sheriff's and DCF reports, the python was regularly handled — with adult supervision — by kids, including Shaianna, who showed no fear of the snake. Darnell told investigators the kids were not permitted to take Gypsy out of her tank or feed it and he likened it to a "loaded gun."
But he also described Gypsy as "real gentle," saying she never coiled up on the kids who carried her draped around their necks. He recalled swishing a dead squirrel's tail in front of Gypsy and how the snake snatched the meal from his hand.
"She was coming up due (for a feeding)," Darnell told sheriff's detectives. "But I don't think hunger would have been the motive. ... There's no way that she could possibly in her mind think that she could eat that baby."
Sobbing during the interview, Darnell said his two older children, then ages 12 and 7, were watching "Family Guy" on TV and the snake was in its tank in that room when he went to bed about 11:30 p.m.
He awoke an hour later to use the bathroom and found the python in the hallway.
"I almost stepped right on her," he said.
Darnell said he scooped up the snake, stuffed it in the mesh bag and put it in the tank. He then walked to the toddler's room and checked on Shaianna then headed back to sleep.
When he awoke about 9:30 the next morning, he peeked in on the child and was aghast. The long yellow constrictor had escaped again and was wrapped around Shaianna's head. Its fangs were sunk in her forehead.
In her interview with detectives, Hare called Gypsy "tame." She shrugged her shoulders when a detective asked how she could tell if the snake was hungry. She said she thought the snake had escaped the tank "'cause it can."
"She might have been hungry," Hare said. "But I don't think she would come right out and do what she did."
 http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/01/106054/snake-that-killed-florida-child.html#ixzz1ABD10vSO