Paramedics arrived at a Hyde Park residence and found a 13 year old girl who was suffering from an infection after trying to pierce her belly button. She was wearing a diaper, weighed 75 pounds and had no detectable blood pressure and was near death.
Deborah Robinson didn’t call a doctor, prosecutors said yesterday, when her daughter botched an attempt to pierce her own belly button and a life-threatening infection set in. She didn’t call one when the girl, in excruciating pain, took to the living room couch three weeks ago and basically stopped eating or moving, prosecutors said. And she didn’t call when her daughter lost control of her bowels; instead, prosecutors say, Robinson put her 13-year-old in diapers.
Robinson told a court psychologist yesterday that she was afraid that a doctor would sexually abuse her daughter. The 38-year-old Hyde Park resident, charged Saturday with child neglect after paramedics found her daughter emaciated and near death last week, was ordered held without bail yesterday until a more complete psychiatric evaluation is conducted to determine whether she is competent to stand trial.
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Last week, paramedics found her daughter, a tall girl wasted away to about 75 pounds, lying on the living room couch wearing a diaper, despondent, and with no detectable blood pressure. Doctors diagnosed her with sepsis, a bloodstream infection that would have caused ”incredible pain” within 24 hours of onset. Deakin said she could have been sick for as long as four weeks.
Police searched the family’s Garfield Avenue townhouse and found more diapers that Robinson said she bought for her daughter to wear and to soak up fluids oozing from her belly, Deakin said. Robinson told police that she was doing the best she could to take care of the girl at home. ”She indicated she doesn’t believe in doctors,” Deakin said.
Words fail me.
