A Gwinnett couple is facing child cruelty charges after a mother dropped off her malnourished 15-year-old daughter at a hospital saying, she “could not do it anymore.”
The act may have saved the life of the girl and it may put the mother and her husband in prison because of apparent abuse.
Doctors and nurses said the teen weighed 60 pounds and had cuts and bruises consistent with beatings. Pressure sores, indicate that she was kept immobilized in a small place for long periods, according to the police incident report. Investigators believe the girl is autistic or has some other learning disability.
Jade Marie Jacobs and her husband, William Anthony Brown, are charged with malicious child cruelty, a felony, according to arrest warrants. Three other girls, ages 9, 11 and 13, found in the home were taken in by social services. They did not show signs of abuse, said Cpl. Ed Ritter of Gwinnett police.
Police swarmed the couple’s split-level house in a neighborhood near Lawrenceville on Aug. 1, arrested Jacobs and put her other three children into the custody of social services. A Gwinnett magistrate denied bond to Jacobs, 35, last week, saying she was a threat to the teenage girl, who is also in custody of social services. Monday evening, police did not know if she was still in the hospital.
As of late Monday, police were still searching for Brown, 40. He is considered the 15-year-old girl’s stepfather, Ritter said.
The case is the newest in a list from Gwinnett that has shocked metro Atlanta over the last year. Last fall came accusations that Eman and Tiffany Moss, also from the Lawrenceville area, starved 10-year-old Emani Moss and put her burned body in a Dumpster. This summer, Recardo and Therian Wimbush, of Buford, have been accused of keeping their 13-year-old son imprisoned in a basement to punish him for misbehavior. They are being held without bond in the Gwinnett County jail.
The newest case stunned the quiet Gwinnett neighborhood on La Mesa Drive, where some of the residents have occupied their homes for three decades. Residents said they were not used to seeing police cars — except for the one belonging to a Gwinnett officer who owns a home near the split-level house inhabited by Brown and Jacobs.
Neighbors said the family had moved into the rental house a few weeks ago and had barely been visible. Ritter said Brown was a truck driver, which might account for his absences.
Jacobs told the hospital that her daughter’s bruising came from a fight with one of her three siblings and said the malnourishment was because the girl refused food, according to the incident report.
But the hospital staff quickly began to doubt the story and a nurse reported the suspected abuse to police.
“The nurse said she (the girl) ate everything we gave her and she was looking for more food,” Ritter said. “She wanted to eat.”
In the La Mesa Drive house, investigators found human waste in the small room where they believe the girl was forced to live, which included a 2-by-2 foot mat that they believed the girl lived on, Ritter said.
“The whole room smelled of feces and urine and the floor was sticky with the urine,” he said.
The teen may be autistic or learning disabled because of an injury she received as a baby while living in Baltimore, Md., Ritter said. That case prompted a criminal investigation in 2000, he said.
Attempts to reach Brown for comment were unsuccessful. Jacobs’ lawyer, Romero Pearson, did not immediately return calls seeking comment.
About the Author
