Published Friday, April 30, 1999, in the Miami Herald ©
Mother gets 30 years for sex acts with daughter
TAMPA -- (AP) -- A mother has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for forcing her teenage daughter to perform sex acts with her in a jail visiting room so her inmate husband could watch.
The husband was on the other side of a clear window in a small room where inmates can meet and talk with visitors but have no physical contact. Other inmates also saw what was going on, according to testimony.
"You transported your child, your own flesh and blood, to the Hillsborough County Jail for purposes of satisfying your sexual gratification, as well as that of your husband," Circuit Judge Chet Tharpe told the woman, who is not being named to protect the identity of her 15-year-old daughter.
"As far as I'm concerned, you have forfeited any right whatsoever . . . of being a parent," Tharpe told her Wednesday after a jury found her guilty of lewd and lascivious acts.
Tharpe said it was "one of the most disturbing cases I have ever presided over."
The 42-year-old woman took the teen to visit her new husband in jail last October and forced her to perform sex acts with her as her 27-year-old husband watched them, according to trial testimony. The mother and daughter made several visits that month.
The woman said she had to perform the acts at the command of her husband, but prosecutors said a letter she wrote told a different story.
The woman testified Tuesday her husband "asked us to do stuff" and "threatened to kill both of us" if they didn't comply.
"I really didn't want to do it," she told the three-man, three-woman jury.
But in a sexually explicit letter to her husband during the fall visits, she wrote: "Hi Hon! What's up? I enjoyed doing that last night while you were watching..."
The couple married in May 1998. According to jail records, the husband was behind bars on a domestic violence charge.
After the verdict, jurors who convicted the woman returned to the courtroom and sat silently in the audience to watch the judge sentence her.
"I would benefit from counseling more than going to prison," the mother told the judge, who could have given her from 25 to 75 years in prison.
The teenager is now living with a foster family.