Mother Gets 9 Years for Depriving, Beating Girl

Woman Says She 'Wasn't Thinking'

Three years ago, a 45-year-old woman from Montgomery County traveled to Colombia to adopt a 9-year-old girl from an orphanage.

After bringing her back, she abused her so badly that the child has post-traumatic stress disorder, according to authorities. And on Thursday, the woman was sentenced to nine years in prison.

"I started to beat her, and I'm not proud of it. I just wasn't thinking," Hyacinth Morgan said in court. "And for that I am truly sorry. I am sorry for the pain that she is suffering."

Prosecutors made a series of stunning allegations in the case:

Inside Morgan's house in Silver Spring, she beat the child with a belt, extension cord or paint stick if she didn't do her chores. She eventually locked her in a laundry room, limiting her access to food and forcing her to use a bucket as a toilet. At one point, prosecutors further alleged, the girl became so hungry she ate bird food. When Morgan found out, she placed her facedown on a chair and beat her with the extension cord. Finally, when a power outage deactivated alarm sensors that kept her confined, the child opened a small window and made her way to a McDonald's, emaciated and looking for something to eat.

"Here we are, your honor, more than a year on from her escape from the defendant, and this child struggles every day," Assistant State's Attorney Deborah Feinstein told Circuit Court Judge Durke G. Thompson at the sentencing Thursday. "She becomes angry for no reason. She feels she can't trust people."

Morgan pleaded guilty in April to second-degree child abuse, a lesser offense than the original charge against her. From the beginning of the case, her attorney, Richard Finci, has said that authorities exaggerated and sensationalized their allegations, in part by overstating how long the abuse took place.

When Morgan spoke Thursday, she expressed similar sentiments.

"I know it has been said that I am in denial, but it's not really that I am in denial," she said. Prosecutors "say stuff that didn't really happen. So in order for me to really accept responsibility, I have to accept stuff that truly didn't happen also."

Morgan said the abuse did not last for two years.

She pointed to family photographs showing the girl happy, including during an Easter egg hunt in March 2008. Morgan also said the girl had come to her with issues that might explain part of her behavior.

"I loved [her], and when I went to Colombia to get her, I wasn't told that she has problems," Morgan said.

State sentencing guidelines were estimated at three months to four years. Prosecutors asked Thompson for the maximum of 15 years.

They asserted that at one point, when the girl tried to hide from Morgan in the laundry room, Morgan sawed through the door to get to her. In doing so, she cut the girl on her hand, according to prosecutors.

When she was beaten, prosecutors said, she suffered injuries to both eyes and cuts and abrasions over her entire body.

In sentencing Morgan to nine years, the judge acknowledged the case's complexity and said it is impossible to know the exact causes of the girl's psychological makeup, given hardships she faced in Colombia.

Thompson said Morgan, after emigrating from Jamaica, had achieved a "remarkable path of educational success" but also had significant mental health issues.

Still, said Thompson, "there is no question that this case calls out for punishment."