This happened in a town right by me and was in my newspaper today.
:mad: What these people did has no excuse! I personally agree with the judge about what he said.
Father, girlfriend tortured 4-year-oldBy Tom Brundrett, For The News-Dispatch
Daniel Mitchell Sr.; Ann Duis
ST. JOSEPH, Mich. - Daniel Mitchell Jr. doesn't play like other 4-year-olds. He doesn't talk either.
He is brain-damaged, just one of the injuries he suffered from repeated beatings and mistreatment by his father and father's live-in girlfriend.
At Christmas, when authorities discovered the abuse, Daniel was struggling to breathe. He weighed only 29 pounds and was unconscious under the Christmas tree on Christmas Day.
His father, Daniel Mitchell Sr., 36, and girlfriend, Joyce Ann Duis, 26, both of Three Oaks Township, were sentenced last week in Berrien County Trial Court for torturing Daniel. Both pleaded no contest to the offenses in February. The court record refers to 800 pages of medical records on the boy.
Judge Charles LaSata sentenced Mitchell to a prison term of 17 to 80 years and Duis to a term of 15 to 80 years. The two will serve at least the minimum before being eligible for parole.
Daniel's mother, Amanda Mitchell, 24, Buchanan, doesn't think the minimums are long enough.
“It is nowhere near long enough,” she said Friday. “I think 80 years is too short.”
She said she visits her son weekly in a Grand Rapids rehabilitation center, and he recently ate from a spoon and said the word “No.” Doctors say it is too early to tell about recovery prospects. “He will not ever be his own age,” said the mother of four.
She said Daniel now weighs 50 pounds and looks healthy. His injuries included brain damage, burns, bruises, scrapes and tape marks. “They covered his body, except for the soles of his feet,” she said. The brain damage came from repeated blows to his head, she added.
Two older daughters of Daniel Mitchell lived with him and Duis in the two-story house at 5523 U.S. 12 in Three Oaks Township. They told authorities they saw their father and Duis slam Daniel's head into the floor or walls, force him to eat at least three large platefuls of spaghetti, making him sick, beat him with a belt, paddle and hairbrush, and make him stand on tiptoe all night in his room or elsewhere with his arms and legs held together by duct tape. He also was forced to stand on tiptoe facing a wall with his hands and arms taped.
The girls said he wasn't breathing deeply and didn't get up or eat on Christmas morning.
Daniel's bedroom was on the second floor, and the lock on his door had been changed so it could be opened only from the outside, court records showed. Mitchell and Duis also had installed an alarm to signal them if Daniel managed to get out of his room alone.
Amanda Mitchell said that in the month leading up to Daniel's being taken to the hospital Dec. 26, her estranged husband stopped her from seeing the child three times over a three-week span, saying Daniel had intestinal flu. She said she contacted Child Protective Services after the third refusal and asked it to check on Daniel's well-being. Nothing happened, she said.
The next week she called the Three Oaks police to ask them to check. She then found that Daniel was in the hospital, nearly dead. She said she and the boy's dad split up in April and that the divorce is pending.
According to court and police records, the investigation began when Mitchell took his son to Lakeland Hospital in Niles and told emergency room personnel that the boy had fallen down a flight of stairs, injuring himself. The injuries did not match the type usually caused in that kind of a fall, according to a doctor's finding in the court records.
Mitchell and Duis fled to Florida and were found by Tampa police in a motel in January.
During sentencing March 12, Amanda Mitchell told the court, “This is just making me sick. It just hurts how someone would do that to a kid.”
In sentencing Mitchell, LaSata said, “I think you are subhuman. ... The fact that you can do this to a child, and your own child, is absolutely unforgivable and disgraceful. I can't bear that you even draw a breath in Berrien County.
“I can't wait to get you out of this town, in prison, away from children, away from subjecting them to the types of abuse that your own son, who on Christmas Day, when normal kids were getting up and running down the steps to open up presents ... is lying unconscious under his Christmas tree, barely drawing a breath because of you.
“I'll tell you, if I could tattoo ‘child torture' across your forehead before I sent you off to prison, I would.”
Duis is the biological mother of a 1-year-old boy and a 4-month-old girl, who were also living in the Three Oaks Township house. Duis lost another child during pregnancy and told the court that happened because of a lack of nutrition.
“Your record is ridiculous,” LaSata told her. “I must confess, as I was contemplating (your sentence) I was somewhat concerned that you might be able to have another child if you got out around the 15-year mark. The fact that you brought kids into this world ... and allowed the torture that took place ... you participated in it, you allowed it to happen and did nothing to stop it ... this is absolutely disgusting behavior. ... What a horrendous crime you committed. You do not belong amongst human beings. You belong in a cell.
“It appears to this court that about the only thing that you accomplished in your 26 years on this planet is agreeing to testify against the boyfriend you were living with while you were married,” LaSata said.
Duis agreed to plead no contest to the torture count and testify against Mitchell if the court dropped two other counts of child abuse. Because of her action, Mitchell subsequently pleaded no contest as well. Two child abuse charges against him were also dropped.
Three Oaks Police Chief Frank Nekvasil said Friday that a lot of people in the community couldn't believe that a case like this could happen there. “I think it opened the eyes of a lot of people. We don't have a bubble over us (as a shield),” he said.
"The Parents"
