Mother Who Tethered Child to Bed Is Sentenced to Prison

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

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

Topper and her father, Loren Bess, were arrested Sept. 7 at their Norco home after a former neighbor called authorities to report possible child neglect. Both pleaded innocent to charges of torture, inflicting great bodily injury, false imprisonment, and willful and harmful abuse to a child.

A case is pending against Bess, who is free on $250,000 bond. A hearing for him is scheduled today.

Paramedics found the girl, Betty Jean Topper, tethered at the waist to a bed in a room where the window was covered with a board. The girl was pale and weighed only 30 pounds. She is now a ward of the court.

Topper has said in jailhouse interviews that her father had threatened her with a gun if Betty were allowed to run free in the house.

In the 1983 attack, Topper’s ex-boyfriend kicked in the door of her 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.