Mother Pleads Guilty to Keeping Girl Chained to Bed

A mother who suffered brain damage in a claw hammer attack pleaded guilty in Riverside County on Thursday to child endangerment for keeping her 6-year-old girl chained to a bed in a darkened room littered with trash and feces.

Under terms of the plea agreement, Cynthia Topper, 39, who was severely beaten by an ex-boyfriend in 1983, was sentenced to six years in state prison. She will receive credit for time served in jail.

“We feel under all of the circumstances in the case that it is a just resolution,” Riverside County Dist. Atty. Robert Spira said in an interview. “Obviously, the attack on her did result in brain damage and it did affect the maturity of her decision-making processes.”

Topper and her father, Loren Bess, were arrested Sept. 7 at their modest home in Norco after a former neighbor called authorities to report possible child neglect. Both pleaded not guilty to charges of torture, inflicting great bodily injury, false imprisonment, and willful and harmful abuse to a child.

Topper had faced a possible maximum sentence of life in prison. A case is pending against Bess, who is free on $250,000 bail. A hearing was scheduled for Bess today.

His lawyer, Darryl Exum, has said the 76-year-old grandfather believed his daughter was taking care of the girl.

Paramedics found the girl, Betty Jean Topper, tethered by the waist to a bed in a room where the window was covered with a wooden board. The girl was pale, weighed about 30 pounds and communicated only with sounds. Paramedics entered through a window because they couldn’t bear to walk through the filth, which was blanketed with baby powder in an attempt to mask the stench. The girl is a ward of the court.

Topper’s lawyer, Scott O’Meara, says her mental capacity is not equivalent to that of a typical 39-year-old mother.

In the 1983 attack, Topper’s ex-boyfriend kicked in the door to her Santa Ana house, fatally shot her husband and then beat her with a claw hammer, pistol-whipped her and cut her throat. She underwent two cranial surgeries and was not expected to survive.

But her diminished mental capacity probably is not so severe that a jury would find her innocent of criminal responsibility, her lawyer, O’Meara said.