Chilling Story Emerges in Child Abuse Case

There were no tears. That was the first indication that something was very wrong.

When 7-month-old, 12-pound Kara Sheppard was finally taken to a hospital in March, she had a rash under her nose and a dark infection that ran the length of her left thigh. She should have been in excruciating pain, but she was silent, “just lying there, not moving,” according to an affidavit filed by Riverside County Sheriff’s Det. David A. Fernandez.

That’s because doctors hadn’t discovered the half of it.

What they found in the next few hours was evidence that Kara had been abused nearly to the point of death, investigators say. She had broken leg bones, rat bites on her back, brain injuries, scarring in her mouth, evidence of sexual abuse and a broken hip.

Nearly three months after the start of this child abuse case, which local social workers called the worst they had ever seen, the girl’s mother and three other adults are in jail awaiting a trial on a litany of charges. And Kara is out of the hospital, beginning what doctors say will be a long and uncertain path to recovery.

Doctors at Loma Linda University Medical Center were able to save her leg by using skin from her back to replace tissue removed from her leg--an operation that was necessary to save her life. She no longer requires a respirator to breathe and has been released from the hospital.

Though she’s too young for doctors to accurately gauge any lasting mental impact of the abuse, officials said Kara has begun responding more readily to interaction with others.

“Developmentally, she’s a few months behind,” said Kevin Gaines, assistant to the director at the Riverside County Department of Public Social Services. “But she’s making really great progress in terms of her physical development and, seemingly, her mental development as well.”

Donations and gifts have flooded in from across the country. There was so much interest from the public that the Department of Public Social Services took the unusual step of getting permission from a Superior Court judge to release details of her progress--information that is typically protected by law.

Gaines said his office has received more than $15,000 in cash donations, as well as cards, flowers and balloons.

“The outpouring of concern was overwhelming,” he said. “This has been a rough one. It has tugged at all of our hearts.”

Authorities say family and community members have offered to adopt Kara and her 2-year-old sister, Sarah. Both will remain in county care for some time, officials said.

Infant’s Life Was Torturous

Meanwhile, authorities and family members are still struggling to understand what happened.

Court documents paint a mind-numbing picture of Kara’s life, particularly during the weeks before she arrived in the hospital--the dead rodent found on a blanket under her bassinet, the allegations that her infection had been “drained” with a box-cutting knife.

According to an affidavit in Kara’s court file, her mother, Lisa Sheppard, was living in a home with no electricity and no heat in rural Riverside County. She told investigators that early this year, unable to provide a home for Kara and Sarah, she left the two children in the care of three acquaintances in Wildomar, south of Lake Elsinore.

Sheppard told investigators that by February she was unable to see Kara or Sarah. Each time she arrived at the Wildomar home, the woman who lived there, Terri Gramaje, “would make up an excuse and not let her in,” Fernandez said in the affidavit.

“Terri would say that she would let [Lisa] in the house, but, the dog bites, or Kara was teething, or sleeping, or that she had just been given a bath, and [Terri] did not want to take Kara outside to avoid Kara from becoming sick,” he wrote.

Gramaje told investigators that she did not take Kara to the hospital earlier because she was unable to reach Sheppard. The affidavit also says that Terri Gramaje, who believed the baby was only sickly, “was afraid that someone might think she hurt the baby, and that she would get in trouble for it.”

Behind those doors, the affidavit says, was a filthy house, scattered with rodents and dog feces, covered in cockroaches that, other children who lived there complained, crawled across their bodies as they slept.

Baby Was Treated Like an Animal

In the next two months, the baby’s condition would deteriorate rapidly. In February, according to the affidavit, when Kara stopped breathing, Gramaje and a friend who lived in a mobile home behind the Wildomar house shook her and doused her with water to wake her. The friend, 45-year-old Eileen Merchant, has also been charged in the case.

In March, the infection on Kara’s leg grew worse, and Fernandez wrote that Merchant described watching Gramaje use a safety pin, then a box cutter, to try to open the wound.

“Eileen said she had seen Terri do something like that before to a cat, and that the cat was fine afterward,” the affidavit said. “It didn’t appear to matter to Eileen that Kara was not an animal.”

Gramaje, 35, and Merchant are charged with child endangerment, torture and aggravated mayhem, said Riverside County Deputy Dist. Atty. Rick Miller. Sheppard is charged with two counts of child endangerment, and Gramaje’s husband--accused of knowing that Kara had been placed in a dangerous environment, but doing nothing to help her--is charged with child endangerment.

Though doctors told investigators that it appears Kara had been sexually abused, no one has been charged with that.

Each is being held in lieu of $250,000 bail, Miller said. A preliminary hearing in the case is scheduled for June 25, and a trial is expected in late summer or early fall.

Merchant’s attorney, Jay Grossman, declined to discuss the charges against her. Terri Gramaje’s lawyer, Tamara L. Wagner, said Merchant is to blame for the abuse.

“My client would be sleeping” when the abuse took place, Wagner said. “There are a lot of people involved. You can’t just point the finger at one person.”

A cousin of Kara’s mother, meanwhile, said relatives are unable to account for what happened.

Stacy Pickell, who lives in Little Rock, Ark., recalled first meeting Lisa Sheppard as a girl in Mississippi. Deaf from early childhood, Sheppard moved with her parents to the San Diego area, graduated from high school with good grades and took classes at a local community college, she said.

“I had the ultimate respect for her,” said Pickell. “She overcame so many obstacles.”

But in the early 1990s, after Sheppard’s parents died and she moved to Quail Valley in southern Riverside County, Pickell lost touch with her--as did others in the family, she said.

Over the last 10 years there have been minor drug charges, and Sheppard survived on public assistance.

“We just don’t know” what happened to Kara, said Pickell. “It’s been hard.”

Donations, marked in care of Kara Sheppard, may be sent to Volunteer Services, Riverside County Department of Public Social Services, 731 Palmyrita Ave., Riverside CA, 92507.