Tuesday, February 12, 2008

By Tommy Witherspoon

Tribune-Herald staff writer

A 2-year-old Bosque County girl lost her eyesight and the ability to walk and spent 30 days in the hospital after her foster father, Matthew Lewis Anderson, violently shook her because she was crying.

McLennan County Assistant District Attorney Melanie Walker thinks a year in prison for Anderson for every day the child was in the hospital was a proper plea offer.

“Anybody who is a parent feels frustration, but most people have the sense to just walk away,” Walker said. “He didn’t, and this little girl suffered serious injuries.”

Anderson, 51, of Waco, pleaded guilty Monday to injury to a child with serious bodily injury, a first-degree felony, after admitting that he shook the child in April 2007 and told her not to cry. Judge Ralph Strother of Waco’s 19th State District Court sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

Anderson and his wife, Cassiopia, were caring for the child and her infant sister as foster parents after Child Protective Services workers removed them from a neglectful home in Bosque County, according to reports filed in the case.

Anderson and his wife, who was not home when the shaking occurred, had been foster parents since July 2005. They had cared for three infant foster children before taking in the sisters, according to a Texas Department of Family and Protective Services spokesman. They were making plans to adopt the child before she was injured, officials said.

The other child was removed from the Anderson home and is in foster care in the Dallas area, Walker said.

In an emotional victim-impact statement Monday, the child’s paternal grandmother, Joanna Kanui, who is caring for the child now, held up a photo of the young girl taken in the hospital. She told Anderson, who began to cry, that his guilt should not be assuaged if he learns in prison that the child’s condition has improved.

Kanui told of a recent trip to McDonald’s with the girl. Another girl, about 3, came over and asked if she wanted to play. Kanui explained that the girl could not see and could not walk.

“That’s OK. I’ll hold her hand,” the little girl told Kanui.

Anderson was not the only one crying in the courtroom before Kanui ended her statement.

Waco attorney Rob Swanton, who represents Anderson, said his client has been full of remorse about the incident.

“Mr. Anderson has been devastated by what’s happened,” Swanton said. “He and his family, obviously, have been affected, as well as the girl’s family. He recognizes that 30 years is a harsh sentence, but he was willing to accept it because he knows this incident led to some very serious injuries, and he did not want to put his family or the victim’s family through a trial.”

Meridian attorney Phil Robertson, who represented the child during CPS hearings, said doctors wondered if the child would survive her first day at the hospital. He said he thinks justice was served in the case.

“It is very difficult to attract good foster parents to the system,” he said. “It is difficult work to begin with. But CPS has given the responsibility to several nonprofit agencies to screen applicants, and that is probably the place where the system breaks down as far as selection of foster parents.”

Chris Van Deusen, a spokesman for the Department of Family and Protective Services, acknowledged Monday that the majority of foster families are recruited and screened by other agencies.

“We are certainly pleased that the criminal justice system has worked in this very serious case and that it has come to a conclusion,” he said. “Fortunately, injuries due to maltreatment in foster care are extremely rare, and we are going to continue to work to try to stop them.”

twitherspoon@wacotrib.com

757-5737

Emphasis added by H4K Editor