A Missouri foster mother has been charged with child abuse and endangerment as authorities investigate whether she traded an adopted daughter to someone in Texas for a monkey and mistreated other children in her care.
The 70-year-old woman from Winfield has been jailed on $250,000 bond since her arrest over the weekend, with her next court appearance set for next Tuesday. No attorney is listed for the woman in online court records. The 1,500-person town Winfield is about 45 miles (72.42 kilometers) northwest of downtown St. Louis.
Prosecutors wrote in asking for a cash-only bond that the girl’s mother was a foster or adoptive parent to more than 100 children. The filing said they had received information that some of those children also had suffered similar physical and emotional abuse.
The Associated Press is not identifying the woman in an effort not to identity her child.
The girl at the center of the case is in her teens. She told authorities she was beaten with wooden trim, shoes and a paddle, a detective with the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office wrote in the probable cause statement. The girl said she tried to tell people what was happening but that no one believed her.
In February, a deputy who was working as a school resource officer in Missouri was contacted about the girl missing classes, the probable cause statement said. While investigating, the deputy was told of a rumor that the girl was traded for an exotic animal to someone in Texas.
The deputy asked authorities in Texas to check on the girl, and she was returned to Missouri, where child welfare officials had gotten a tip several months earlier that the girl was being abused.
Lincoln County prosecutor Mike Wood elaborated in an interview with KSDK-TV that a witness described being asked to bring the child down to Texas and bring the monkey back in return. Wood said they will need to investigate further to see if that is credible.
“What was disturbing is that the idea that that was even a possibility, like how we could have a serious conversation that that even was something being considered or joked about is really kind of disheartening,” Wood told the station on Tuesday.
According to the probable cause statement, the girl said the woman she was staying with in Texas worked out of town and left her for days at a time to take care of exotic animals. The girl said she wasn’t subjected to sexual abuse or forced labor.
The woman told a detective she was friends with the girl’s adoptive mother and took her in to give the pair a break from each other. Charging documents describe the girl’s living conditions there as unsanitary and said she was inadequately supervised.
Wood didn’t immediately respond to a phone message from The Associated Press seeking comment. But the prosecutor’s office said in a Facebook post that more charges were expected as additional information becomes available. The post said authorities are now sifting through a decade’s worth of allegations of abuse.
“Numerous victims and witnesses have already contacted my office and I would encourage anyone else with information to continue reaching out to my office, as well as investigators,” the post said.
Baylee Watts, a spokesperson for the Missouri Department of Social Services, provided no information about the case, writing in an email that “information related to specific child abuse and neglect investigations is closed and confidential under Missouri law, except under very limited circumstances.”
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