Molesting Mother Given 12 Years : Anaheim Woman Abused or Sexually Assaulted 5 Children

An Anaheim woman who sexually abused her older daughter with a rolling pin and physically or sexually assaulted four other children was sentenced Friday to 12 years in state prison, after the children urged the judge to put her behind bars for a long time.

Judge John H. Smith Jr., in North Orange County Superior Court, Fullerton, sentenced the 41-year-old woman, who was convicted by a jury on Jan. 17.o

The prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Nina Brice, had asked that the woman be sentenced to the maximum term of 23 years for her conviction on six felony counts of molesting her children.

She said, “I’m pleased, I’m satisfied,” with Judge Smith’s decision.

“It’s a just sentence,” Brice said. “It could easily have been more, but it’s not too little. It’s appropriate.”

An investigator for the county Probation Department also had urged that the woman, whose name is being withheld by The Times to protect the identities of her children, be sentenced to the maximum prison term.

The investigator noted that the mother continues to deny the charges against her, as she did during her trial, and has accused the older daughter, now 17, of fabricating the allegations because of her mother’s opposition to the daughter’s romantic attachment to a Marine.

Brice said the girl testified at the sentencing and asked the judge to impose a long prison term.

The children’s father, who is divorced from the mother, read a statement from the younger daughter that said, “I would like my mom to get the maximum time that is allowable under the law.

“After she is done with that, I would like her to go to a mental hospital so she will not hurt any other kids like . . . us.”

The woman had been free on her own recognizance since her arrest last June 6, but Smith ordered her taken into custody immediately, to begin serving the prison term.

Brice called the woman “a grotesque parody of a mother” after the verdict was announced. She said investigators charged the woman with attacking her daughters and her sons, ages 14 and 15, with a wooden spoon, scissors, a knife and matches, as well as the rolling pin, in the three years before her arrest.

She was convicted of sexual abuse against the older girl and older boy, and of physically abusing the younger boy. She was also convicted of physically abusing a 22-month-old girl left in her care on Nov. 21, 1983.

The girl’s death at the time was blamed on sudden infant death syndrome, but one of the woman’s daughters testified at the trial that her mother several times had held her hand over the toddler’s mouth until the child went limp. Brice said the coroner could not determine the cause of death, so the woman was never charged with murder.

The prosecutors said the daughters have been placed in a foster home, and appear to be responding well to counseling and treatment after what she called years of abuse. She said the boys are in separate foster homes. All four of the children were adopted.