Prison for couple who abused 6-year-old
COEUR d’ALENE — A Post Falls couple whose torture of a six-year-old boy caused his pancreas to rupture almost killing the child will each serve no less than 15 years behind bars.
For one of them, Joy Tamika Anderson, 31, Friday’s prison sentence comes despite the lack of any prior felonies. First District Judge Scott Wayman said the sentence was appropriate because Anderson failed to take any responsibility for the chronic abuse of the child that experts and prosecutors referred to as torture.
The boy testified Anderson was the one who stomped twice on his stomach as the boy lay on the ground, because he had snuck food after being starved and locked in his room.
“Because I ate her butter and candy,” he told Detective Neil Uhrig of Post Falls police. “So she stepped on my tummy … It was hurting a lot until it got bigger and bigger and bigger.”
The boy’s distended stomach from a ruptured pancreas eventually caused Anderson and the child’s father, Anderson’s half-brother and live-in boyfriend, Melvin Bledsoe, 37, to seek medical help for the boy, leading to their arrest.
The couple was convicted Friday of two counts of injury to child with aggravated circumstances for years of abuse that included beatings, tying the child to a bed, isolating and starving him.
Wayman sentenced Bledsoe to a fixed 15 years in prison with another 15 years indeterminate, for a maximum 30 years. Anderson’s sentence was the same. In both cases prosecutors asked for a steeper sentence - 45 years maximum for Bledsoe and 60 years for Anderson.
The couple, in the Kootenai County Jail since being arrested more than a year ago, lied to authorities about the origins of the boy’s distended stomach when he was seen Oct. 10, 2017 by doctors. The boy was taken to Coeur d’Alene Pediatric Clinic after days of suffering with a ruptured pancreas that caused fluids to leak into his abdomen.
Bledsoe told detectives his son was “fine and dandy” the day before he was admitted to the hospital. “I gave him a shower, and shit, because he pooped himself,” Bledsoe told Detective John Mason. “All of a sudden his stomach swells up.”
Prosecutors said the boy who lived with Anderson and Bledsoe and three other children, was not allowed to go to school, he was barely fed, beaten with clothes hangers and was often tied to a bed and locked into his room.
“He was isolated, he was not educated, not schooled,” Deputy prosecutor Rebecca Perez said. “He was basically in his room tied up all the time.”
Deputy prosecutor Laura McClinton said the child wasn’t known in the neighborhood.
“None of those neighbors knew he existed,” McClinton said. “They knew about the other kids.”
The six-year-old was isolated, she said.
Isolation is among characteristics of torture that include starvation and physical and mental abuse.
“This is exactly what we have here, the medical definition of child torture,” Perez said. “This situation was very nearly a murder charge.”
Defense attorneys painted their clients as victims as well. Bledsoe, who was sent to a prison rehab program in 2012 for abusing the boy, was too steeped in drugs and alcohol to know what he was doing, his attorney Anne Taylor said.
“He did not recognize the severity of what was going on,” Taylor said.
Although both Bledsoe and Anderson’s cases were tried separately, they were sentenced together. The couple turned on each other while in jail and accused each other of the heinous crimes.
Defense attorney Jed Nixon said Anderson suffered abuse at the hands of her parents and step parents, and later she was abused by Bledsoe. She accused Bledsoe of the child abuse and asked the court for a brief prison sentence before being released on probation.
Wayman, though, squarely put the blame on Anderson, and reprimanded her for failing to take any responsibility.
“This is one of the worst cases of child abuse this court has seen,” Wayman said. “Injuries were inflicted. Psychological injuries were inflicted. We’re very lucky this child did not die.”
The only way to ensure there would be no more victims for a long time at the hands of Bledsoe and Anderson, the judge said, was to impose a lengthy prison term.
Bledsoe showed no emotion at his sentence.
Anderson, in a prepared statement said she loved the boy and that “I pray for him every day.” The child remains in foster care and is doing very well, authorities said.