Obese Girl’s Mother Found Guilty of Misdemeanor Abuse

A woman whose 680-pound, 13-year-old daughter died in her living room--covered with bedsores and naked but for a sheet--was found guilty of misdemeanor child abuse Friday, but spared the harsher penalties of a felony conviction.

Marlene Corrigan, 48, whispered a relieved “good” when Superior Court Judge Richard E. Arnason read his verdict in front of a courtroom packed with reporters and “size acceptance” activists.

Corrigan faced up to six years in prison if convicted of felony abuse in the death of her daughter, Christina. The girl had not been to school in a year or the doctor in five years, and had not been seen walking in the days before her death. Feces was crusted in the folds of her flesh.

Finding that Corrigan was guilty of “passive misconduct” rather than active abuse, Arnason acquitted Corrigan of the felony charge.

There was no way that she “knew or could have known that her conduct or failure to act was likely to produce great bodily harm or death” to her daughter, Arnason said in his verdict.

The misdemeanor conviction carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail. Corrigan will be sentenced Feb. 27. Defense attorney Michael Cordova said his client probably will be placed on probation and sentenced to community service.

“I would have liked to have a complete and total vindication, but we can live with a misdemeanor,” Cordova said. “It takes a village to raise a child, and this village abandoned Christina.”

Christina’s death and her mother’s prosecution have been followed avidly around the globe, providing months of fodder for tabloid television and radio talk shows across languages and continents.

Finger-pointing audiences have been mesmerized by the details of Christina’s life and death. By her hundreds of bedsores. By descriptions of days spent lying on the floor, unable to walk to the bathroom.

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On Friday, a phalanx of photographers surrounded the silent Corrigan as she attempted to leave the courthouse in Martinez after the verdict was read, only to be chased into a first-floor restroom.

Outside Department 28X, there were plenty of comments from the dozen “size acceptance” activists who had gathered to support Corrigan, a 48-year-old federal worker.

“I really think this is a travesty of justice,” said Sally Smith, executive director of the National Assn. to Advance Fat Acceptance.

“The education system failed this family. The social services system failed this family. The medical system failed this family and now the justice system. Marlene Corrigan should be allowed to grieve in peace.”

Christina died in November 1996 of congestive heart failure. Deputy Dist. Atty. Brian Haynes had said that Corrigan was not charged with a felony for having a fat child, but the issue of weight cannot be extricated from the case.

Haynes’ prosecution rested on Christina’s bedsores, which were caused by her immobility, which was caused by her bulk.

“The court agreed with our office that the child was endangered,” Haynes said Friday. “From her statements to the police, it was clear [Corrigan] knew the bedsores existed. . . . [We] believe from the photographic evidence that she should have known the child was in severe need of medical care.”

During the trial, witnesses testified that Corrigan had brought her child to doctors in a Kaiser Health Plan HMO 90 times in an effort to get help for the girl, who by age 8 told her mother she refused to go back.

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Christina was born at a normal weight of 7 pounds, 11 ounces, but was put on her first diet at age 2, was off the weight charts by age 3 and was never sent to a specialist about her rapid weight gain.

Corrigan “didn’t make any mistakes,” Cordova said Friday. “She reached out to people. She asked for help. People still say food did this. Food didn’t do this. . . . The doctors at Kaiser said there is nothing physically wrong with the child, and now people are saying, ‘Why didn’t you do something?’ ”

The “size acceptance” advocates said Friday that the prosecution of a single mother who cared for two ailing parents along with her troubled daughter sends a terrible message.

Activist Judy Freespirit said the legal case “sends a message to the mothers of fat children that they are liable for prosecution for simply having fat children.”

But Arnason’s decision, Freespirit said, is “a victory of sorts.”

“It’s a victory of sorts that [Corrigan is] not going to the state prison for six years. It’s a victory of sorts that she doesn’t have a felony on her record. But it’s a hollow victory.”

The prosecution’s “attack” on Corrigan “scares me,” said Marilyn Wann, who edits a publication called FAT!SO?

“Christina Corrigan’s life was tough,” she said. “Her death was a tragedy. We don’t know why it happened. But society still sees fit to blame the mother. . . . This particular ruling does nothing to make the world safer for fat children, and that’s my concern.”