Mobilizing to Stop Child Abuse

"It could be my daughter on the back of the buses," she said. "I think certainly drivers are going to notice when they are behind a bus like that."

Olivia was permanently injured in April 1998, on her fourth day with an in-home day-care provider. Adelmann said that when she picked up Olivia from the Herndon home, the child was asleep. The only clue that something was wrong was the sporadic jerking of her arm and leg. Later that night, Adelmann took Olivia to the hospital after the jerking worsened and she could not wake her up.

"At the time, they didn't tell me, but she was very lucky to survive. They did not expect her to live," Adelmann said recently. "The entire left side of her brain is gone. It's been damaged so severely."

Olivia, 9, is a second-grader but lives with the aftermath of the shaking. She has mild paralysis on one side of her body, is blind in her left eye, and struggles with severe attention deficit disorder and learning disabilities, Adelmann said.

"The situation doesn't get any better; it just changes," Adelmann said.

The day-care provider, Margo Collado, was convicted of child abuse and sentenced to three years in prison in 1999.

Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Sandra R. Sylvester in Prince William County has handled about 30 of these cases in her career -- all of which she described as emotionally draining and difficult to prosecute.

"No one wants to believe that someone would pick up a baby . . . and shake them to the point that their brain literally becomes scrambled," Sylvester said.

The oldest victim she has seen was 3. Ryan Sanders was among the youngest. The year he was injured, three other babies were also shaken in the county, with Ryan the only survivor, Sylvester said. She prosecuted the case against his caretaker, Eleanor Kay Hinegardner, who was convicted of felony child abuse and sentenced to four years in prison.

"There are some cases that you never stop thinking about, and he's one of them," Sylvester said. "Ryan was sentenced to life, as was his mom and dad. They got a life sentence."

Just a few weeks ago, Ryan visited a class Sylvester teaches at Northern Virginia Community College in Woodbridge. He sat in his wheelchair, rocking himself and playing with his caregiver, unaware of the effect he was having on the students.

"The students were crying. They left in complete silence that day," Sylvester said. "This was a boy that the parents had all this promise and hope for. He should be playing ball and soccer and looking at girls. He's almost 15 years old."