Mom of Molested Disabled Girl Gets Prison for Taking Money From Abuser

Despite an admission of guilt and a tearful apology, a Wilmington woman was sentenced Monday to 65 months in prison for accepting $10,000 in hush money from the man who sexually molested her severely disabled daughter.

The 33-year-old woman, whom the Tribune is not naming to protect her children, apologized to Will County Judge Amy Bertani-Tomczak. “Most of all, I want to apologize to my children,” said the mother of three while softly crying.

You piece of shit. Five and a half years. You’re a lucky piece of shit. If I were judge, you wouldn’t see daylight ever again.

But Bertani-Tomczak noted the woman was sentenced to 30 months’ probation in 2003 for crashing her car while drunk and causing two of her children to sustain broken bones.

“It seems you’ve made seriously bad choices in your life that have had serious consequences for your children,” the judge said.

You piece of shit.

Lawrence Sommers, the woman’s attorney, said he would ask Bertani-Tomczak to reconsider her decision. “We believe the sentence is excessive,” he said.

You’re a piece of shit too.

The woman pleaded guilty in March to obstruction of justice and concealing a fugitive for accepting $10,000 from Lawrence Lee Southwood and agreeing not to tell authorities what she knew about the molestation.

Southwood, 69, is serving a 104-year prison term after a jury convicted him of sexually abusing the girl when she was 14.

“For $10,000, she’ll look the other way, not cooperate with police, while her daughter is being sexually assaulted by a pedophile,” Assistant State’s Atty. Lea Norbut said.

Southwood gets 104 years. They should have castrated the bastard and shoved it down his throat or up his ass.

Southwood befriended the woman and sometimes cared for her disabled daughter, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. At the trial of Southwood, who has a long history of sexual and violent crimes, the girl testified he repeatedly molested her in August and September 2005.

A day after accepting the money, the woman told Detective David Margliano she did not know of any sexual contact between Southwood and her daughter, prosecutors said.

“Her decision to take $10,000 to look the other way was an act of unconscionable greed and betrayal like I have never seen during my 28 years in the criminal justice system,” State’s Atty. James Glasgow said Monday.

The woman’s children are being cared for by an aunt and uncle under the supervision of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, according to testimony.

For about nine months after being arrested in January 2006, the woman was barred from seeing her children, testified Donald Adams Jr., a foster care case manager for Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Joliet, who is monitoring the children’s welfare.

The children’s behavior declined during that period, and there were regular disturbances, Adams said. When the mother was allowed to have weekly supervised visits, the disturbances decreased, he said.

Do the kids WANT to see their piece of shit mother?

The woman’s sister, boss and baby-sitter testified on her behalf, saying she would be able to comply with any conditions of probation — the sentence sought by Sommers.

“It would do the people of the State of Illinois no good to incarcerate this woman and cause further damage to her children,” Sommers said.

But Norbut noted the woman’s history. In addition to the drunken driving case, she was convicted in 1996 of driving with an unrestrained child and in 2003 of driving on a suspended license. Her children were under DCFS supervision for a time after the DUI crash, according to testimony.

Yeah, yeah….forgive and forget, right? Let’s not cause “further” damage to the kids by incarcerating their piece of shit mother.

I give up.