John Jefferson
Alyssa Bowman (Greene County Sheriff’s Office).
A Missouri mother will spend the next several years behind bars for subjecting her two young children to a regime of abuse and neglect so bad that one child was described as a “victim of torture.”
Alyssa Nicole Bowman, 29, pleaded guilty to two counts of child abuse and neglect on Friday morning in Greene County.
Originally charged with several additional crimes, prosecutors agreed to drop four additional counts of child abuse and neglect and two counts of child endangerment in exchange for her plea.
In quick fashion, Bowman was sentenced to spend nine years in state prison by Greene County Judge Jerry Harmison.
The defendant and her husband, Joshua Bowman, 30, were arrested in May — weeks after a relative brought a “visibly malnourished and visibly injured” 2-year-old boy to Mercy Hospital in Springfield, according to a probable cause statement obtained by the Springfield Daily Citizen.
Police say the boy had bruises all over his body — most obviously on his forehead — and several cuts and abrasions in several other places. The child also appeared to be malnourished, law enforcement said.
“I observed Victim 1 to appear very malnourished to the point I drew immediate parallels of photographs that depicted concentration camp victims,” an officer wrote in the probable cause statement.
The boy in question referenced by the officer also had sagging skin and almost no fat on his body, police observed.
The relative who brought the boy to the hospital said they had not seen the child in quite some time; the parents apparently left the child in the relative’s care in late March — prompting a more or less immediate visit to the emergency room.
Police and the Greene County Children’s Division then paid a visit to the Bowman residence.
There, authorities found things “unkempt” with an ever-present “foul odor,” according to the probable cause statement. The area where the boy slept was found to be littered with the remnant of food — and what appeared to be feces, police say.
Things were not markedly better for the older child.
The boy’s sister was forensically interviewed days after the hospital visit. She told investigators that when she burped it was not “tasting good” for several weeks — but that her parents told her to “ignore it.”
The adults in her life were also “mean” to her, she said, which sometimes included them not allowing her to eat for “one day,” police wrote in the probable cause statement.
The girl went on to allegedly say the Bowmans “all the good stuff” and were “rude” to her and her brother by often not giving them food or water, according to law enforcement.
At the plea hearing, Prosecuting Attorney Elizabeth Fax told the court that the boy only weighed 20 pounds on the day he was rescued from his dire circumstances, according to a courtroom report by the Daily Citizen.
The child was diagnosed with acute kidney injury, battered-child developmental delays, developmental nonverbal disorder, and failure to thrive, the prosecutor said.
“He was also diagnosed as a victim of torture,” Fax told the judge.
The defendant will be eligible for parole after serving five years of her sentence.
Joshua Bowman has a hearing slated for December.
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