Girl Found Chained to Bed Is Improving, Officials Say
An emaciated 6-year-old girl found chained to a bed in a trash-filled room has improved her communication skills and is eating more, hospital officials said Thursday.
Betty Topper has been at Loma Linda University Medical Center since Sept. 7, when authorities rescued her from horrid conditions and arrested her mother and grandfather. The girl was pale, weighed 30 pounds and could communicate only with grunts and groans.
The girl’s condition was upgraded from fair to good condition, the hospital said in a statement Thursday.
“She is now . . . more interactive with her caregivers and responds to voice commands,” hospital spokeswoman Anita Rockwell-Hayden said in a statement. “She is also walking with more confidence, and her appetite has improved.”
Betty’s mother, Cindi Sue Topper, 39, and her grandfather, Loren Bess, 76, remain in Riverside County jail on bail of $250,000 each. They have pleaded not guilty to felony charges of torture, child endangerment and false imprisonment.
Topper was attacked in 1983 by an ex-boyfriend at her home in Santa Ana. He fatally shot her husband, then beat her with a claw hammer, pistol-whipped her and cut her throat. She underwent two cranial surgeries. An Orange County prosecutor, Richard King, has said that a doctor or counselor found that the attack left Topper with “the mental capacity of a fifth-grader.”
Authorities discovered Betty after a former neighbor called to say she suspected neglect in the family’s home in Norco.
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