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A Texas woman allegedly slammed her daughter’s head into a wall and later coached her and her siblings to lie about what happened when an investigator told her doing so was child abuse.
According to an arrest affidavit for 39-year-old Katherine Crosby, a Child Protective Services investigator noted bruising around the child’s eye on June 6, KTRE reported. When the investigator asked the girl what happened, the child said, “My mom did this to me and it hurt really bad.”
The girl said Crosby put her in a timeout then later grabbed her by the ponytail and slammed her head into the wall, resulting in a black eye.
The investigators spoke with Crosby, who admitted what she did and even demonstrated the act exactly as the child reported. “What, I cannot do that?” she reportedly asked.
When investigators interviewed the victim and her siblings again on June 26, they said that Crosby told them to say she fell on a brick. In the course of the interview, the little girl asked what she was supposed to say, because, apparently, Crosby’s boyfriend had told her to tell a different story.
“Wait, was I supposed to say that I tripped on a brick because that is what mom said to say, or am I supposed to say that I hit my head on the tin outside?” she asked, according to the affidavit.
At another meeting with Child Protective Services the following day, Crosby told the investigator to “ask they girls again in front of me, what happened.”
“They will all tell you that I did not do anything,” she said.
According to the affdavit, it wasn’t the first time Crosby had punished the children with violence, Law&Crime reported. The child — whose age was redacted in the report but is under 14 — told the investigator that “when someone in their house gets angry, they get punched, their nose gets broken, they get black eyes, or their head gets banged into the door.”
Crosby was booked into the Tyler County Jail on a charge of felony injury to a child on July 9. She was given a $125,000 bond and released the next day.
It’s not clear if the children are still with her.