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Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Toddler tortured with duct tape; mother and mother’s boyfriend indicted
DAYTON - Two people were indicted Tuesday on felony charges related to the duct-tape torture of a 3-year-old girl, including the girl’s mother.
“The two had videotaped what they had done to this little girl,” Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias H. Heck, Jr. said. “You hear both defendants laughing.”
Sherry Allender, 22, the girl’s mother, and Charles J. Jones, Jr., 26, were indicted on counts of complicity to commit abduction (through restraint) and complicity to commit endangering children (through torture). Both charges are third-degree felonies, punishable by up to five years in state prison.
Arrest warrants were issued for Allender and Jones on Tuesday, Heck said.
The indictment said the abuse occurred April 17. The two duct-taped the girl’s wrists, legs and mouth, Heck said.
“They decided it would be fun,” Heck said.
The couple then video-recorded the abuse using a cellular phone. At one point, Jones rips the tape off the girl’s mouth, causing her to scream in agony, Heck said.
She also fell down trying to walk.
“As she falls to the ground, she is crying ‘mommy, mommy,’” Heck said.
The abuse happened at a home on the 1200 block of Central Park in Kettering, Heck said.
The two later sold the cellular phone to the girl’s biological father. His mother, who lives in Harrison Twp., discovered the video on the phone and called the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office in May, Heck said.
The girl was removed from Allender’s custody and is with the paternal grandmother, Heck said. Allender also has a 1-year-old child, who was also removed. That child has a different biological father, Heck said.
“You can clearly see in the video that she’s in pain,” said Janna Huber, supervising attorney for the prosecutor’s office’s child abuse bureau.. The girl did not suffer any serious injuries during the abuse, Huber said.
Jones has pleaded guilty to felony charges at least five times, according to Montgomery County Common Pleas Court records. He has been convicted of receiving stolen property, burglary, grand theft of a firearm, breaking and entering and complicity to commit grand theft.
Heck said Jones is “certainly no stranger to the criminal justice system.”
This is the first time Allender has been indicted in Montgomery County. Since January, she has been on probation for a misdemeanor conviction for violating a protection order, according to Kettering Municipal Court records.
Heck said the couple had been drinking when the abuse happened, but that it still mystifies authorities.
“What makes people do this?” Heck said. “I don’t know.”
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