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Jamie Strahm (KGW/YouTube).
An Oregon stepmom was sentenced to just under two years in prison after caring for her boyfriend’s son for years until he showed up to the hospital weighing less than 40 pounds when he was 8 years old.
Jamie Strahm earlier this month was found guilty of two counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment, the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
On Friday, District Judge Leslie Bottomly sentenced Strahm to 90 days in jail for the first count and 20 months behind bars for the second. The sentences will run consecutively for a total of 23 months which is a month shy of two years.
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According to prosecutors, Strahm and the boy’s father started dating in 2014. The next year, when the boy was 4, he suffered an “unexplained brain injury,” requiring a weeks long hospital stay. At that point the boy weighed about 45 pounds and was in the 85 percentile for boys his age. He went home from the hospital with a G-tube, which inputs food and nutrients into a child’s stomach.
But the boy “failed to thrive” under Strahm’s care over the ensuing years and he lost a significant amount of weight, prosecutors said. Strahm claimed her stepson wouldn’t eat and had to be fed through the tube. By April 2018, the then-7-year-old boy had dropped to the 13th percentile in weight. Strahm proceeded to skip several doctor’s appointments.
She finally took him to a dietician in October 2019. The 8-year-old was “extremely thin and frail” and weighed less than 40 pounds, according to prosecutors. He was admitted to a children’s hospital. When Strahm was not in the room, he would eat on his own. Staff banned her from the hospital and the boy gained 10 pounds within a month, showing he did not need the feeding tube.
A jury convicted her on March 7. Jurors found that the defendant “intentionally and knowingly withheld the necessary and adequate” food and medical attention from the boy, prosecutors said.
But the boy’s biological mother was not too happy about the sentence.
“How is it acceptable that she got under two years?” Loreena Menzel told Portland NBC affiliate KGW.
At her sentencing, Strahm apologized to the court.
“I just want the opportunity to be able to fix the mistakes I have made as a mom, to repair the damage that I have caused,” she reportedly said.
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