Mother Gets 7 Years in Neglect

Accusing her of violating the “fundamental nature” of motherhood, a judge Tuesday sentenced a Quail Valley woman to more than seven years in prison, the maximum allowed by law, for handing off her infant daughter to three friends now charged with torturing the girl nearly to death.

Lisa Sheppard, 35, wept as Riverside County Superior Court Judge Robert J. McIntyre rejected assertions that she was largely unaware of the conditions the infant and another child were living in. He sentenced her to seven years and four months in prison.

“The only person in the world who could protect these children was their mother,” McIntyre said. “For whatever reason, their mother chose to abandon them.”

Sheppard, who had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of child endangerment, was not accused of harming her children herself. She will be eligible for parole in about four years, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Rick Miller.

Sheppard has four children--two teenagers who were removed from her custody years ago and two younger children she sent to live with friends in southern Riverside County in October 2000.

Defense attorney Darryl L. Exum said Sheppard believes she has been unfairly portrayed as a bad mother, although he conceded that she made a mistake when she left the two younger children with her friends, who are now awaiting trial.

“She did not have the basic skills to take care of her children,” Exum said. “She trusted these people. She put too much trust in them, and to that extent she did abrogate her responsibility as a parent.”

In March, Sheppard and her three friends were arrested after 8-month-old Kara was taken to a hospital, launching what many officials have described as the worst case of child abuse they have seen.

Kara was malnourished, covered with cockroach and rodent bites and suffering from broken bones and other injuries. She was “virtually brought back to life,” one of her doctors testified in court documents, and will have lasting physical handicaps.

In the weeks that followed, other friends and supporters--even some law enforcement investigators--painted a relatively sympathetic picture of Lisa Sheppard.

She had told detectives she asked her friends to care for the two children because she was living in a mobile home in Wildomar with no heat or running water. She was seen by some as an impoverished mother who made a mistake while trying to do the right thing for her children.

But in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s sentencing, documents submitted by prosecutors, parole officers and other officials to support the case painted a different picture. Sheppard, her former roommate told a Loma Linda social worker, according to one document, is “not as fragile or helpless as she may want us to believe.”

Among those asking for the maximum sentence was Sheppard’s own sister. “I would ask the court to send a very strong message to my sister, that her actions are not acceptable, no longer tolerated,” Sonja Sheppard, who has helped care for Lisa’s two older children, wrote to prosecutors.

“For at least seven years, she will not have the opportunity to bring another child into this world, nor further tear down the lives of those she has already brought into this world. They are alive . . . for the grace of God and those who love them, not because of their mother.”

The documents cast Lisa Sheppard as a manipulative woman who dabbled in methamphetamines and learned at an early age to use her deafness to feign helplessness.

“She was victim to all yet responsible for none,” Sonja Sheppard wrote. “Nothing was her fault.”

Questioning defense attorneys’ claims that Lisa Sheppard did not know the conditions in which her younger children lived, prosecutors said a nurse recently told Sheppard that marks near Kara’s mouth appeared to be rodent bites. Sheppard “spread her hands five to six inches apart and said, ‘Yeah, they had rats this big,’ ” the court documents say.

“It is inconceivable to think that the defendant had no knowledge that something was very, very wrong with her baby,” prosecutors wrote to the judge.

The court documents also contained a lengthy note from Kara’s foster parents, whose identities are being protected. The letter details the extensive care Kara is receiving. Doctors had to remove skin from her back to graft onto badly infected areas of her legs, the letter says. She wears compression hose on her legs to prevent thickening of scar tissue, and will have a colostomy bag for the foreseeable future because of internal injuries.

“The only way to describe this baby is to say that she has some inner strength that far exceeds anything I have ever seen,” one of the foster parents wrote.

Kara’s story has touched many in the Southland and has brought an outpouring of gifts and donations.

In Glendora, Sandburg Middle School teacher Tina Moore challenged her sixth-grade math students to respond to the case. The students decided to collect loose change for 13 days.

Moore promised to match whatever the students raised. Thirteen days later, the students handed Moore $313 in change. Moore recently sent a $626 check to a fund for Kara. “I’m going to have to get a second job,” she joked. “The idea was that there are some cruel things that go on in the world, but much more kindness. It turned into a wonderful experience for them.”