Woman Admitted Striking Daughter in Face, Deputy Testifies : Courts: Charlotte Russo, accused of child abuse, also refused to promise not to strike the girl again, jury is told.

Three years ago, Charlotte Russo told a sheriff’s deputy and child social worker that she badly bruised her daughter’s right cheek but refused to promise them that she would not strike the girl again, the deputy testified Thursday.

“She told us that there was nothing wrong with hitting her daughter in the face. That that was the best place to hit her,” Deputy Barbara Anderson testified in Russo’s child-abuse trial.

The incident was one of two occasions when authorities went to the Russo home on complaints that the girl was being abused, but left the teen-ager in the Westlake house, according to testimony Thursday.

Russo, 52, was eventually arrested in May, 1993, and charged with two counts of child abuse.

The second time that social workers were called to the Russo residence, an anonymous tipster complained that the mother was forcing her daughter to live in a locked room of the family’s back-yard racquetball court.

Alan Munson, an investigator with the county’s Public Social Services Agency, responded to the complaint.

Munson testified that the girl seemed sad and frightened, but she insisted that she was not being abused. Munson decided to close the case.

“Everybody said nothing happened,” Munson told the Ventura County Superior Court jury. “I believed I wasn’t going to be able to break through the defense.”

Russo’s lawyer, James M. Farley, has acknowledged that his client locked the girl in the racquetball court’s adjoining bathroom and a dressing room, and that she once bit her on the forearm. But the girl was unruly and in need of discipline, he said.

The first call to authorities came in September, 1990. Anderson said she went to the principal’s office at La Reina High School in Thousand Oaks to see the teen-age girl, who then had a deep bruise on her right cheek.

“She said that she had been struck by her mother,” Anderson testified.

Anderson said she and a social worker then accompanied the teen-ager to the Russo home. The mother met them in the front yard, Anderson said, and she was “confrontational and angry with us.”

The mother acknowledged striking the girl, who was 13 at the time, and bruising her. She also said she was a registered nurse and knew what was best for the girl, Anderson testified.

Anderson also testified that she asked Russo to refrain from hitting the girl. The mother said “she couldn’t guarantee she would not do that again,” according to the deputy. Anderson and the social worker left the girl in her mother’s custody.

Jerome Blesener, head of children’s services within the Public Social Services Agency, could not be reached for comment late Thursday on policies regarding removing children from suspected abusive parents.

The second time authorities were called, Munson said he went to the family home Oct. 29, 1992, on a tip that the girl was being kept in a room in the racquetball court.

A woman answered the door through an intercom, but instructed him to wait, Munson testified. She returned five minutes later and claimed that both the girl and Russo were not at home. Munson said he told the woman that he would be back the next day.

The girl has testified that about the same time Munson started visiting, her mother for no apparent reason stopped forcing her to live in the racquetball court.

When he came back the next day, Munson said he interviewed the girl, Russo, her husband Richard, and several sisters and brothers.

Munson said the teen-age girl made very little eye contact with him and seemed sad, but denied being forced to live outside the house.

“At some point, I said, ‘Were you ever locked in the racquetball room, the racquetball court?’ ” Munson said. “And she said, ‘No.’ ”

At the time, Charlotte Russo told him that the teen-ager was having problems with her salt-free diet, her demeanor and her ability to make friends with children her age.

Munson said he then tried to find the anonymous tipster. The girl has testified that it was her mother’s sister-in-law. But Munson said that the tipster made the report through Los Angeles County social workers, and that he had no luck tracking the person down.