GIZZELL FORD - 8 yo - / Charged: Father, Andre Ford - Austin, TX

Bedridden dad didn’t touch girl, but he’s charged in her murder

By RUMMANA HUSSAIN Criminal Courts Reporter

September 22, 2013 4:58PM

Gizzell Ford, center, and her younger sister Jay'dah Outlaw, left. (Family photo)
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Updated: September 23, 2013 2:13AM


When a skeletal Andre Ford was wheeled into court last week, even prosecutors said the ailing man was too frail to beat the 8-year-old daughter he is accused of murdering.
 
But what Ford couldn’t do with his hands, he did with his mouth, allegedly mandating the sadistic punishments and vicious beatings that led up to Gizzell Ford’s strangulation.

When Ford wasn’t ordering the child to suck up her urine to atone for wetting herself or be harnessed to his bed, he just watched his mother torture Gizzell in their Austin home, Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney Bridget O’Brien said.

Ford’s arrest isn’t unusual under Illinois’ accountability statute, legal experts said.

“It doesn’t matter if he didn’t pick up a belt and hit the child himself. If you hire a hit man, they [prosecutors] aren’t necessarily [just going] to go after the person who pulled the trigger,” explained Bruce Boyer, director of Civitas ChildLaw Clinic at Loyola University’s Law School.

Ford, 28, was hardly a bystander, according to prosecutors and the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which just completed a report that indicated both Andre and Helen Ford abused and neglected Gizzell and two other children in their care.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/crime/22690894-418/bedridden-dad-didnt-touch-girl-but-hes-charged-in-her-murder.html

November 15, 2013

By Tony Arnold, Chris Fusco and Monifa Thomas



CASE IN POINT

Gizzell Ford, 8

Found dead July 12 after being beaten, allegedly by her grandmother, Helen Ford, and father, Andre Ford, both now charged with murder. A DCFS worker was with her two months earlier when a social worker interviewed her about allegations she was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend, records show. A doctor who examined her weeks before she died noted possible bruising on her buttocks.


http://www.wbez.org/news/illinois-losing-more-children-child-abuse-and-neglect-any-time-last-30-years-109155