The Herald, Sharon, Pa.

Local News

August 24, 2009

Stepdad beat boy, 8, with ball bat, police say

By Tom Davidson

HUBBARD TOWNSHIP — “I’m afraid of him, he tells me he’s going to kill me,” the bruised-and-bloodied 8-year-old boy told Brookfield Police Saturday afternoon, referring to his stepfather.

He had two black eyes and was limping when police arrived.

“I know he’s going to kill me, he never lies,” he said in what patrolwoman Roy Anne Rudolph characterized as “the most convincing voice.”

He had “strike welts too numerous to count on his belly, chest, abdomen, sides, underarms, feet, ankles and back,” Ms. Rudolph wrote in her report.

His hands and feet were swollen several times their normal size and he had a scabbed-over-but-still-bleeding head wound when authorities arrived Saturday afternoon at the home on the Brookfield Township side of Everett East Road. More injuries and abuse were found when the boy was taken to the emergency room including a diaper he said he was forced to wear sometimes.

Police were tipped to the abuse by an anonymous call.

Damion Craig Wise, 30, of 5961 Everett East Road, is in Trumbull County Jail on charges of felonious assault stemming from the abuse. He was arraigned Monday before Eastern District Court Judge Ronald J. Rice.

The family had lived at the Everett Road address about four months, according to neighbors.

“It’s one of the worst cases of abuse I’ve seen,” assistant prosecutor Sean O’Brien said.

The boy told police he was he was beaten with belts and a souvenir-sized Cleveland Indians baseball bat because he is “bad.”

Wise forced him to hold books above his head “to make my arms strong,” the boy said, and when he got tired, “I sat down, so I got beat.”

The beatings began two years ago when his mom and Wise married, he said. Wise also made him wear a diaper because he sometimes wet the bed or had accidents when he was told to “hold it” while doing chores when he had to go to the bathroom.

He said he was forced to spend days outside and neighbors told police the boy “sits out in that yard in that hot sun all day from sun up to sun down and no one seems to check on him.”

When Ms. Rudolph asked him what should happen, he said “I want my dad to get some anger management.

“He might have to go to jail for a while,” he told police.

He was taken to Trumbull Memorial Hospital and then transferred to Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, Akron, with a variety of injuries.

“It is believed that Damion has beaten (the boy) for the last one to two years,” Patrolman Jay H. First wrote in his report.

Wise was already facing charges of domestic violence and endangering children from a June 20 dispute with his wife, when police allege he held a knife to her throat and threw a rock through her minion’s back window to keep her from fleeing with the three-month-old baby they have together. Pieces of glass were found in the carseat the baby was in, police said.

The baby was removed to protective custody Saturday.

Wise is set to be sentenced on those charges Thursday in Rice’s court, at which time a hearing will also be held on the felonious assault charge.

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