Children testify about being locked in basement

Flathead District Court Judge Robert Allison continued a sentencing hearing on Thursday for two women who admitted to locking children in a basement earlier this year.

He wanted to study a companion dependent neglect case before deciding how to punish the women.

Crystal Mears, 37, and Amy Newman, 46, each pleaded guilty to two counts of felony criminal endangerment earlier this year after they admitted as part of a plea agreement to locking some of Newman’s adoptive children in the basement. They claimed the conduct was discipline for behavior issues the children exhibited.

In testimony on Thursday, five of Newman’s adopted children, three girls and two boys, testified about alleged abuse that went far beyond being locked in the basement.

“The testimony I heard sounded like torture,” Allison said after hearing the statements of the children, ages 10 through 16.

Newman’s 16-year-old adopted daughter testified that life in the home was so bad that she tried to commit suicide and got herself sent to group homes because of the living conditions.

“I purposefully got myself sent away again by trying to run away,” the 16-year-old testified.

The girl said that Newman had been an amazing mother, but after her divorce, Newman went through two boyfriends who treated them poorly. In addition, she said, to the children being treated badly after Newman entered into a relationship with Mears.

“Amy was an amazing mother,” the 16-year-old testified. “I don’t know why she just let someone come into our lives and treat us this way, let men come into our lives and treat us that way.”

The girl said she taught her younger siblings to pick the lock to the cupboards so they could steal food. She said that she still loved Newman, but that she thought the women should go to prison.

“My siblings were beat,” the girl testified. “I believe these women need to go to jail and need to spend some time because that’s what my siblings spent.”

The 10-year-old boy testified that the children were locked up in the basement and “spanked a lot.”

“I get scary nightmares all the time,” the child said of the aftereffects of his time in Newman’s care.

The 12-year-old boy testified that Mears’ two children were given regular meals of things like cereal and spaghetti, but that he and his siblings were mostly given peanut butter sandwiches to eat at dinner with water, and sometimes milk. On Saturdays, the children would get three meals of peanut butter sandwiches, he said. The other siblings all gave a similar account.

“When they ran out of bread, they would give us pasta with butter and that is all,” the 13-year-old girl testified.

The two boys testified that they were locked in their basement bedrooms overnight, with only a bucket to relieve themselves. Sometimes there were mattresses in the basement, sometimes not, they said.

“We were in the basement and it was the hard floor and we had blankets to sleep on,” the 12-year-old boy testified.

The 12-year-old said that sometimes he was beat with a belt, but sometimes he was also hit on his fingers and bare toes for discipline. The 13-year-old girl testified that she was locked in the basement for three days as punishment after she was suspended from school. The siblings testified that on one instance one of the boys broke down the bedroom door of the basement bedroom so he could steal food from the pantry.

The siblings testified that Mears was the disciplinarian who instituted most of the punishment, which contradicts the scant testimony the women provided when they pleaded guilty earlier this year. In that instance, Newman admitted to locking the children in the basement and Mears said that she consulted with Newman, but never physically locked them in herself.

Mears’ mother, Clara Mears, said that she did not believe the allegations.

“I am totally shocked,” Clara Mears said. “I couldn’t even get my daughter to spank my granddaughter when she needed it.”

Clara Mears said that she frequently visited the home and that everyone would have normal meals of things like pizza. She said she never noticed any bruises or signs of undernourishment.

“They were totally coached today,” Clara Mears said of the children’s testimony, after she called them liars.

Clara Mears said that one of the boys tried to burn the house down and put cat litter down his sister’s throat. It is an allegation that Crystal Mears and Newman had stated in their change of plea hearing.

“They were put in there for safety reasons,” Clara Mears testified.

Three of the five children rebutted Clara Mears’ testimony.

“This is infuriating,” prosecutor Alison Howard said after Clara Mears spoke.

“It boils anger in me to have the audacity to say that four or five kids were coached to say that,” the 16-year-old said.

Crystal Mears did not wish to give a statement to the judge on Thursday, and Newman was not able to make one because Allison said he wanted to review the facts of a family neglect case that took the children from the care of Newman. Mears was investigated but did not lose custody of her two children, her attorney said.

Allison said he wanted to have all the facts in the case.

“I’m not going to consider myself constrained to only the fairly scant facts that were testified to at the allocution,” Allison said.

Newman’s attorney Sean Hinchey objected to review of the neglect case, which is typically confidential.

“I don’t think you should sentence Ms. Newman based on what might be in the [neglect] file,” Hinchey said.

Hinchey said that the allegations in the felony case that were testified seemed to be better suited for a neglect case than a criminal one.

“We had a tough time seeing this case as felony conduct,” Hinchey said. He and Mears’ attorney also had concerns that the testimony at the sentencing hearing presented facts that weren’t laid out in charging documents.

Allison said that he would review the file and take into account the children’s testimony because doing otherwise would “essentially ignore a certain reality.”

Sentencing was continued to Nov. 18 at 9 a.m. Allison could sentence each of the women to up to 10 years in prison and fine them up to $50,000.

The children testified at the hearing that they have all been placed in new homes. The 16-year-old said they are doing much better. The 10-year old smiles now, she said. He never did that before, she claimed.

“Now I’m living in a foster home,” she testified. “They are really great parents and I love them to death.”

She also had something to say about Mears and Newman’s allegations about her siblings.

“They aren’t lying children,” she said. “They tell the truth ... I just don’t want people to think they aren’t good kids”

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.