Two Care Providers Plead Not Guilty in Child-Abuse Case

A mother and son who ran a Mira Mesa foster-care home pleaded not guilty Monday to multiple child-abuse charges in response to a lengthy San Diego Police Department affidavit, which avowed that several children in the home claimed to have been beaten, tortured, treated as “slaves” and threatened with death.

The children, between the ages of 17 months and 12 years old, told police that they feared for their lives when they were tied to a kitchen post and beaten and that they were forced to sleep on a cold garage floor and inside a bathtub.

The affidavit said the children recounted being forced to drink hot sauce and eat hot peppers, and being given pills that made them fall asleep.

Brief Court Hearing

In a brief Municipal Court hearing Monday, Henri Mathis Dyson and her son, Harold Alexander Dyson, pleaded not guilty to the charges of assaulting the foster children--youngsters who officials said had already been abused and had been placed by social agencies in the Dyson home for their protection.

Henri Dyson, 41, was charged with one count of felony child endangerment, four counts of felony corporal punishment and one count of misdemeanor child endangerment.

Harold Dyson, 24, was charged with three counts of felony corporal punishment and one count of misdemeanor child endangerment.

The charges cover assaults that allegedly occurred to four victims over the last year at the Dyson home, in the 8700 block of Pagoda Way. Henri Dyson had been licensed to provide foster- and day-care services since June, 1982.

The Dysons, who were granted court-appointed attorneys during the hearing, were then returned to jail, where they are being held on bail of $200,000 each.

Interviewing Children

Police are interviewing the 17 children who had been placed in the Dyson home, a two-story, white stucco house with wood trim, seven bedrooms and four baths. Police have said the home was kept spotlessly clean.

“There is an ongoing investigation involving numerous other children,” said Caryn Rosen, a prosecutor in the district attorney’s child-abuse unit.

“And, because of the nature of the offenses and the positions of the defendants as foster parents, this is obviously a serious case. It is tragic, particularly since there may be more children involved and because these children were in foster care, where they believed they were taken for their own safety and protection.”

If convicted on all counts, Rosen added, the Dysons could face maximum prison terms of 30 to 50 years.

Hospital Notified Police

The case surfaced Jan. 6 when Henri Dyson took a 17-month-old boy under her care to Sharp Memorial Hospital after he lapsed into a coma, which was caused, police later said, by a forced-water enema.

According to police records filed in court, the Dysons told detectives that the boy became stiff and began to shake uncontrollably at home, then suffered numerous seizures. The seizures reportedly continued on the way to the hospital, as well as in the emergency room.

At the hospital, Dr. David Chadwick determined that the boy had ingested one or more liters of water, apparently rectally, and that there were bruises on the child’s buttocks and abdomen that were consistent with a punch or blow. The doctor also said the boy suffered a collapsed lung.

According to the affidavit, Henri Dyson, while at the hospital, told Detective Dan Dennis that she had been picked to become the boy’s adoptive mother. But, when told the extent of his injuries, she responded, “I’m glad this happened to (him) before I adopted him,” according to the document.

Search of Home

Police later conducted a room-by-room search of the Dyson home. Court records show that they found equipment used to give enemas, as well as a post in the kitchen, along with many sticks and ropes.

“In the northwest bedroom, I found that the bedroom light could not be turned on,” Dennis said in the court records. “With a flashlight, I located two small female children, asleep on a single bed with no mattress cover. A chest of drawers was searched for clothing, (with my) finding only empty soft drink bottles.”

He said he found pads on the garage floor, along with children’s shoes and jackets hung on a portable rack. “I could also smell the odor of urine and feces emitting from within the garage,” he said in the affidavit.

All of the five foster children then in the home were taken into custody, and, in interviews with authorities, they slowly began to describe life inside the Dyson home.

A 12-year-old boy, who suffered a deep abrasion to his buttocks, first told officials that he had fallen off his bike. But later, according to the affidavit, he tearfully recanted and said that Harold Dyson had tied his wrists and ankles to the kitchen pole and had beaten him “numerous times with two sticks.” He said that, after his last beating, he collapsed and was kept home from school.

Sleeping Arrangements

The boy also said that he slept alone on a pad in the garage for two of the three years he lived there. He said another child slept in the bathtub because of a bed-wetting problem.

He also said, according to the affidavit, that Henri Dyson gave all the children “red pills to keep them quiet,” and that when guests came to visit, she made all the foster children go to the garage and remain quiet.

Dennis said the boy told police that the Dysons considered the children a means to earn more money through state foster-care payments. “Mrs. Dyson told him that he and the other children were her slaves or paychecks, often calling each of them bad names,” he said in the affidavit.

The 12-year-old boy also described how his sister had been killed by a car while a foster child, though the circumstances of that death are unclear in the court document. He said Henri Dyson refused to let him visit his sister’s grave, saying she was going to kill him and the 17-month-old boy “before this year was up.”

The boy also “stated numerous times that he was afraid of Mrs. Dyson and her son, Harold, and did not want to go back,” according to the affidavit.

The ‘Black Stick’

An 8-year-old girl in the home told the detective that, “if she were to return to the Dyson residence, both Mrs. Dyson and her son, Harold, would strike her with a black stick,” according to the affidavit.

She was quoted as saying that the black stick was kept behind the microwave oven in the kitchen and that she saw two of the boys tied to the post, their hands manacled with a rope and jump ropes, and then beaten. She said in the document that Harold Dyson left numerous bruises on the back of one 6-year-old boy.

The girl was quoted as saying that “Mrs. Dyson gave each of the foster children pills that made them sleepy and fall asleep.”

She also said, according to the affidavit, that she was “forced to drink hot sauce in a cup, from Harold, and was also forced to eat peanut butter sandwiches with hot peppers or hot sauce on top of the sandwich, and, when she asked for a drink of water, both Mrs. Dyson and Harold would not allow this.”

She said, the document state, that one boy slept on the garage floor “without a bed or blankets,” and that another boy slept in the bathtub “with no shirt or blanket.”

Dennis, in summing up the little girl’s fears, said: “She urgently told me to remove all of the ropes in the house, because Mrs. Dyson used ropes to hurt people.”