Nanny, 19, Sentenced in Beating of Child, 2 : Crime: She was secretly videotaped by the father of the girl, who was hit repeatedly on the head with a wooden spoon.

A 19-year-old nanny who was secretly videotaped beating a toddler on the forehead with a wooden spoon pleaded no contest Wednesday to a misdemeanor child abuse charge and was sentenced to serve four months in jail.

Before sentencing Martha Mendoza, Lancaster Municipal Judge Richard E. Spann viewed a five-minute segment of the videotape, which showed the sobbing 2-year-old trying to fend off Mendoza’s blows with her hands.

Mendoza, who has been in jail since the Sept. 23 incident, had been caring for Stevie Lewis for about six months when the videotape was made. John Lewis, a field supervisor for an oil company, had become suspicious because his daughter would scream and cry every time he left to go to work. His wife, Betty, a computer programmer in Woodland Hills, left for work before he did.

Concerned about his daughter’s behavior, he put the video camera on top of a television set and left it running, its red indicator light covered with tape. After watching the tape later that night, Lewis turned it over to Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies, who arrested Mendoza.

After her arrest, Mendoza told investigators that she previously had spanked the child but had never before hit her with a spoon.

But Deputy Dist. Atty. Pamela Rhodes said the videotape clearly indicated that the child had been struck similarly before. On it, Mendoza is pictured attempting to feed the child, who is choking back tears. Although the sound on the tape is muffled, Rhodes said that Mendoza can be heard shouting: “Do you want one?”

The child then “froze up . . . just like she knew what was going to happen” next, said Rhodes. After striking the child once, Mendoza said, “Do you want another one?” and then hit her rapidly six more times, raising her arm high over her head before each of the blows.

Doctors examined Stevie and found that she had suffered no physical injury in the attack.

“The child looked more like a whipped dog than like a child we would like to see in any of our homes,” said Rhodes, who had asked Spann to impose the maximum sentence on Mendoza.

But Deputy Public Defender Evelyn Burns asked Spann for leniency. She said her client was “very sorry for what happened.”

“She was an untrained young girl placed in a situation that became increasingly unmanageable for her,” Burns said.

Spann acknowledged Mendoza’s youth and lack of training. But “she had an unprotected 2-year-old child totally at her mercy,” he said.

Spann sentenced her to six months in jail, the maximum amount for the charge of unjustifiable cruelty to a child, but suspended 60 days of the sentence. With the time already served and time off for good behavior, Mendoza could be released in less than 2 1/2 months.

Rhodes said the Immigration and Naturalization Service had interviewed Mendoza, who is in the country illegally, and she is likely to be deported to her native Mexico after she serves the remainder of her sentence.

Lewis, who now leaves Stevie with a neighbor who cares for children in her home, said he thought the sentence was fair.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” he said. “I kind of got lucky when I set this up and caught her, because if I hadn’t she’d still be doing it today.”