Crown wants stepmom jailed for beating young children

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The Moncton Crown is seeking a lengthy jail term for a woman who regularly beat her stepchildren, leaving them bruised and frightened.

“These were three young, vulnerable children,” prosecutor Marie-Andrée Mallet said during a sentencing hearing in provincial court on Wednesday.

The offender is a 35-year-old southeastern New Brunswick woman with no criminal record. She pleaded guilty to three counts of indictable assault part way through her trial recently, after the oldest child testified.

The identify of the victims is under a publication ban, so the woman also cannot be named.

The abuse happened a few years ago, when the oldest child was five and six years old, the middle child was four and the youngest was two. Mallet reviewed the testimony of the oldest child, who is 10 now, during the sentencing hearing.

The child told the court their stepmom would hit them every day on their “backs and bums” with her hands, leaving them bruised and the youngest sore and crying. The two older children had blue bruises while the youngest had the worst marks, according to the prosecutor. Photos submitted to the court showed the bruising.

“The pictures speak for themselves,” Mallet said. “These children suffered major injuries from these assaults.”

The prosecutor described the beatings as “repetitive.”

“These were assaults after assaults,” she said.

The two older children prepared victim impact statements with the help of their mother and while they were brief, they spoke volumes.

“I wasn’t happy …I was scared … I didn’t understand why it hurt me,” said one child in the statement.

The other was similar: “I was hurting … I didn’t feel good … I didn’t like it.”

Mallet asked for 18 months jail and two years probation, while defence lawyer Tim Murphy asked for a 12-month conditional sentence order, with six months on house arrest and six months on curfew, and probation. He said his client has a job and owns a property and if she’s jailed she will lose both.

“This was an uncharacteristic deviation from what would otherwise be a crime-free life,” he said, adding the sentence he proposed focuses on rehabilitation.

Murphy said while the facts of the case are “not good” he believes 18 months of jail is “heavy handed.”

The offender had an opportunity to address the court and was trembling and emotional but only said that she cares for dozens of animals on her property.

Judge Luc Labonté will impose sentence on June 13.