There are disturbing foster care cases, and then there are stories so bizarre that they sound like somebody tried to write satire and accidentally produced a criminal court file.
A 70-year-old Missouri woman has been convicted of child endangerment after prosecutors said she sent a 14-year-old foster girl to Texas and later received an exotic monkey from the people who took the child.
Brenda Deutsch, of Winfield, pleaded guilty in June to first-degree endangering the welfare of a child. Last week, Lincoln County Judge Thomas Frawley sentenced her to seven years in prison.
Then came the part guaranteed to leave plenty of people asking what exactly a seven-year sentence means anymore.
The judge suspended the entire prison term and placed Deutsch on three years of probation. As long as she complies with the conditions of that probation, she will not serve the seven years behind bars.
The case began after Deutsch sought permission to take the girl to Texas to visit a friend. Five days later, according to court documents, an anonymous caller contacted the Missouri Department of Social Services Children’s Division and accused Deutsch of physically and emotionally abusing the teenager.
Investigators eventually learned something even stranger.
Authorities received allegations that the girl had effectively been exchanged for an exotic animal and was living in Texas. The teenager told investigators that Deutsch had informed a friend in Texas that the friend could keep the child, while Deutsch would continue keeping the financial assistance associated with her care.
Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney Mike Wood later described the alleged arrangement in remarkably blunt terms.
“You know, why don’t you send a monkey and you can just keep the child?” Wood said, describing what prosecutors believed Deutsch had communicated.
Witnesses reportedly said a monkey was later sent back to Missouri.
Wood said prosecutors could not establish enough evidence of a direct quid pro quo to support a human trafficking charge, so that allegation did not ultimately proceed to trial.
The teenager’s account of life with Deutsch was even more troubling.
According to court documents, she told investigators Deutsch struck her with objects including a paddle and shoes. During one alleged beating, the girl said she lay on the floor attempting to “soften the strikes to her body.”
She also alleged that Deutsch took away her clothing and once threatened to kill her “if she did not shut up.”
The girl was eventually removed from the Texas home by Child Protective Services. Witnesses described the house as unsanitary and filled with exotic animals.
Perhaps the most staggering detail is the scope of Deutsch’s foster care history.
According to prosecutors, Deutsch fostered more than 200 children over roughly two decades. Wood said more than 200 calls concerning her home had been made to the state’s abuse and neglect hotline. Some older assault allegations could no longer be prosecuted because the statute of limitations had expired.
Two child-abuse charges were dropped as part of Deutsch’s plea agreement.
Judge Frawley reportedly called Deutsch’s conduct reprehensible and revoked her foster care license during sentencing. According to reports, Missouri had still maintained that license up until that point.
Deutsch’s daughter, Brina Johnson, offered perhaps the bleakest summary of the entire affair.
“That’s just her thing. But she wasn’t any nicer to those monkeys than she was to a child.”
The teenager, now 17, was reportedly present in the courtroom for sentencing.
Deutsch walked away on probation.
Whatever legal reasoning produced that outcome, the facts described in court paint an ugly picture of a child who was supposed to be protected by adults and instead allegedly bounced between strangers, endured abuse and wound up at the center of a story involving an exotic monkey.
A foster child is not property. A foster child is not a bargaining chip. And a foster child certainly is not something to be swapped around because an adult has grown frustrated with caring for her.
The seven-year sentence exists on paper. The probation is what Deutsch actually received.
For the young woman who lived through it, there is no suspended sentence for the years she lost.
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