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A mother from Florida has learned her fate after she allegedly let her boyfriend beat her 5-year-old son, resulting in him having 46 injuries.
Taylor Schaefer was sentenced to serve 60 years in prison during a hearing on Friday, March 6, after she entered an open plea to 25 felony charges, including include aggravated child abuse, kidnapping and tampering with a witness, according to a press release from the 7th Judicial Circuit State Attorney’s Office.
The investigation into the case began in May 2023 when Schaefer claimed she saw her boyfriend, Shawn Stone, abusing the child on home surveillance video when she wasn’t at the house.
In the footage, Stone allegedly punched the boy and struck him with a mop after he had a bedwetting accident.
The state attorney’s office said that medical professionals inspected the boy and documented 46 visible injuries following the attack, which included a fractured skull.
Investigators later discovered multiple recordings that documented the abuse and concluded that Schaefer had been present in the home when it took place. However, authorities said that she failed to seek medical care for her son despite his visible injuries, according to WKMG, WFTV and WFLA.
Additionally, videos showed the boy being left alone at the house for hours at a time with his hands bound behind his back. Investigators also said that the child was occasionally locked inside a dog cage and was deprived of food as a form of punishment on different occasions.
“You watch it, and it churns your stomach to think, ‘How could you do this?’” Volusia Sheriff Mike Chitwood said of the footage that captured the abuse, per WKMG. “I’m speechless, 36 years in policing and I’m speechless when I watch those videos … Detectives told me this is going to be one of the worst things we’ve ever seen because those cameras captured everything.”
Chitwood added that he felt it was “too good of an ending for [Schaefer and Stone] to rot in their jail cells” and said that they “stole those kids’ futures.”
The sheriff’s office said that one 9-year-old child was also abused and was forced to drink boiling water, was sprayed with boiling water and was beaten with other household objects, according to WKMG. Meanwhile, authorities said that a 7-year-old child did not receive proper care for a serious medical condition while living in the house.
“A mother’s sacred duty is to love and protect her children — not to viciously beat, torture and demean them,” State Attorney R.J. Larizza of the 7th Judicial Circuit said in the press release. “It is a brutal reality that some mothers commit shamefully violent and cruel acts upon their children.”
The state attorney’s office said that the case against Stone remains pending. It is not currently clear if he has entered a plea or retained legal representation.
He has been charged with aggravated child abuse and 23 additional counts stemming from repeated acts of abuse and neglect, according to the Volusia Sheriff’s Office.
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