"Jane and John" HARDY - 6 and 10 yo - /Accused: Dwayne and Pamela Hardy Altamonte Springs FL

Jury selection begins for adoptive father charged with child neglect

Dwayne and Pamela Hardy were arrested in August after 6-year-old girl, 10-year-old boy were found scarred, malnourished.

Dwayne Hardy, 50, and Pamela Hardy, 47 are accused of neglecting the young children they adopted last year. She's charged with leaving them scarred and malnourished. (Seminole County Sheriff's Office, Seminole County Sheriff's Office / June 13, 2011)

June 13, 2011

SANFORD – Jury selection began this morning for an Altamonte Springs man, accused of neglecting the two school-aged children he and his wife adopted while she hit, starved and abused them.

Dwayne
Hardy, 50, is standing trial alone, but his wife, Pamela Hardy, 47, is
the parent who authorities say punished the 6-year-old girl and
10-year-old boy so harshly, it amounted to near torture.

Pamela Hardy bit the little girl and on one occasion, broke her tooth, according to the formal charges against her.

She
left scars on the buttocks of both children, where she had hit them
with either a wooden paddle, bread board or spoon, according to charges.

he also stretched open their mouths with her fingers, pinched them and deprived them of food and sleep, authorities say.

The girl told authorities she would get so hungry, she ate food she found in the garbage.

Pamela
Hardy is to be tried later. The charges against her: two counts of
aggravated child abuse and two counts of child neglect.

Her husband faces just the two lesser charges: child neglect.

Testimony at his trial is to begin tomorrow.

The
couple adopted the children in February 2010. They had been living as a
family since December 2009, according to court records.

Pamela
Hardy was a stay-at-home mom who homeschooled the children. She and her
husband had raised four biological children. When they were arrested in
August, they also were caring for a 9-year-old boy who they had adopted
as a toddler.

He was well nourished and showed no signs of abuse, according to authorities.

Neighbors said the Hardys were a church-going family from whom they saw no signs of abuse.

The
10-year-old boy who prosecutors say was abused is expected to testify
via closed-circuit TV from another room in the Seminole County criminal
courthouse.

Circuit Judge Jessica Recksiedler ordered those
arrangements at the request of Assistant State Attorney Stacey Salmons.
The boy's therapist testified that the child would be traumatized if he
had to be in the same room as the defendants and describe what he went
through.

SANFORD —
A jury Wednesday night convicted an Altamonte Springs man of neglecting two
children he adopted while his wife withheld food from them and spanked them
so hard and so often that she left them with scars.
Dwayne Hardy, 50, faces a minimum of two years in prison. He is to be sentenced Aug. 1.
After the jury announced its verdict around 9:30 p.m., Circuit Judge Jessica
Recksiedler ordered Hardy jailed until then.
The prime abuser, according to the children who testified Tuesday, was his
wife, Pamela Hardy, 47. She is charged with a more serious crime: aggravated
child abuse. She is to be tried later.
Dwayne Hardy on Wednesday told jurors that he had never abused the children,
never saw his wife abuse them and when he found out she had paddled them
until they bled, told her to stop.
He acknowledged that when the 10-year-old boy and 6-year-old girl lived with
them for two months before their formal adoption in February 2010, they were
prohibited from using corporal punishment.
Once the children were officially part of the family, though, both parents
would spank them with a wooden paddle and he sometimes used a belt, he said.
Once when he was whipping the boy with his belt, he noticed blood on it, Hardy said.
"I saw blood and stopped," he said. "I said, 'My belt is ruined. It has blood all over it.'"
Spankings are a valid form of discipline, he told jurors, because that's what the Bible says.
"I've been a Christian for more than half of my life," he testified. "We live by Christian principles."
Assistant State Attorney Stacey Salmons told jurors that Hardy knew his wife
was physically abusing the children but did not put a stop to it. That, she said, made him a criminal.
The boy, Hardy testified, would lie and steal and needed to be disciplined.
He stole food from the cupboard, the refrigerator and the household garbage,
Hardy said. One day, the boy scooped up from the ground and put in his mouth
beans that were covered with ants from a picnic-ground parking lot, Hardy said.
That, though, didn't mean the child was hungry, the defendant said. It meant
he had the habit of eating everything in sight.
Both children suffered dramatic weight loss, said Assistant State Attorney
Gino Feliciani. He showed jurors photos of the boy that showed his ribs sticking out.
"They were being starved," Feliciani said.
When the Hardys were arrested in August, four months after the adoptions, the
children were gaunt, bruised and had wounds and scars on their bottoms and
the palms of their hands, according to reports.
Pamela Hardy had spanked their hands with a wooden and metal kitchen spoon,
the children said.
Dwayne Hardy testified he never withheld food from the boy as punishment and
didn't notice that the children were losing weight. He did require the boy
to fast, making him go to bed one night without food and giving him just one
meal on other days.
That, though, was part of a six-day "step-down fast" that Hardy said he and
the boy did together. It was to teach the boy that he didn't need to eat
everything in sight, he said.
At the same time, he and his wife were trying to put the children on a special
gluten-free, sugar-free and wheat-free diet. That was an attempt to improve
their behavior, he said.
Investigators, though, found Pop-Tarts and Fruit Loops in the family's home.
Those, said Dwayne Hardy, were not for the children.
Both children suffer from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, according
to their foster mother, and when they went to live with the Hardys, they had
prescription medicine for it.
Hardy testified that his wife missed a key appointment with social workers,
and as a consequence, the children lost their Medicaid benefits. When they
ran out of pills, the parents never got a refill. The Hardys also stopped
sending the children to a mental-health counselor.
Also, in nine months with the Hardys, neither child went to the doctor, they
said. At the same time, a 9-year-old boy that the family had adopted years
earlier went to a chiropractor 59 times, Feliciani said.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/jurors-find-adoptive-central-florida-father-guilty-of-1543206.html

I hope they try this skanky female soon.

What possesses people to take on children they don't want? What causes them to be so cruel to them? I'll bet it was state aid that they wanted, nothing else. Why didn't the state know under what conditions the kids were living?

59 times to a chiropractor sounds like an insurance scam to me.

Detailed Information for Case 592010CF003373B


Case Number: Judge:Defendant Name: DOB:Proceeding: Courtroom:Court Date: Time:

592010CF003373B	RECKSIEDLER, JESSICA J
PAMELA HARDY
12/1963
DOCKET SOUNDING	5D
06-22-2011	08:30AM

http://www.seminoleclerk.org/CriminalDocket/case_detail.jsp?CaseNo=592010CF003373B

Woman pleads no contest in child abuse case

SANFORD, Fla. --
A central Florida mother accused of starving her two adopted
children and spanking them until they bled has pleaded no contest in the
child abuse case.Pamela Hardy entered her plea Wednesday in
Seminole County. The 47-year-old faces a minimum of 11 years in prison.
She faced two counts of aggravated child abuse and two counts of child
neglect.According to testimony during her husband's trial, Pamela
Hardy was the primary abuser. Her husband was convicted last week of
two counts of child neglect.

The Altamonte Springs couple is expected to be sentenced Aug. 1.
The Orlando Sentinel reports that the couple had raised four biological children
and another boy they adopted a decade ago.

I don't think this POS should have been allowed to plea no contest.

Child torture: Adoptive parents ordered to prison for child abuse
By Rene Stutzman, Orlando Sentinel

4:38 p.m. EDT, August 1, 2011

SANFORD - A judge today sentenced an Altamonte Springs mother to 11 1/2 years in prison for spanking a 9-year-old boy and his 6-year-old sister, children she had just adopted, so often and so long that she left them bruised and bloody.

Pamela Hardy, 47, was the primary abuser in her household, accused of aggravated child abuse and child neglect, but her husband, Dwayne Hardy, 50, was charged, too.

He was sentenced to two years in prison today. He was convicted of a less serious charge - child neglect - by a Seminole County jury in June.

Today, Circuit Judge Jessica Recksiedler pronounced sentence after listening to nearly five hours of testimony, much of it from friends and family members, who described the Hardys as godly parents who were strict disciplinarians but not abusers.

She rejected a request that each be placed on probation.

The children, now 11 and 7, told jurors at Dwayne Hardy's trial in June that both adults spanked them and starved them.

"Miss Pam" hit them most often, spanking them daily sometimes, often on their bare bottoms with a wooden paddle and a wooden spoon, they said. She also left the palms of their hands, which she hit with kitchen spoons, bruised and gashed.

Assistant State Attorney Stacey Salmons showed jurors photos of the children's injuries. Some onlookers in the courtroom gasped. The bottoms of both children have deep and permanent scars.

The children were not in court today, but their foster mother, Elaine Murray, read letters from each. They asked the judge to send Pamela and Dwayne Hardy to prison.

Pamela Hardy spanked them until they were bloody, wrote the boy, and punished them by putting them in a pen with the family dog.

"I've had nightmares every night now, and I hate it," wrote the boy.

A psychologist, Kyle Goodwin, testified that both parents told him several months ago that yes, the children had been bruised and bloodied but insisted the spankings were not excessive.

Both also told him they had no intention of stopping corporal punishment, Goodwin said.

The couple also withheld food from the children when they misbehaved, according to Stephanie St. James, a child protection worker at the Seminole County Sheriff's Office who helped remove the children in August.

If the boy failed to feed the family dog, he didn't get to eat, St. James said.

The boy told jurors that he sometimes stole food from the family's garbage because he was so hungry.

In June, Pamela Hardy pleaded guilty to aggravated child abuse and child neglect. She did not testify today, but her husband did.

He and his wife had adopted the children, he said, because they wanted to make youngsters' "lives richer, better, fuller."

Was he remorseful, asked his attorney Mutaqee Akbar.

Yes, he said, but he stopped short of apologizing for whipping the children with a wooden paddle and belt.

They had emotional problems that he and his wife dealt with as best they could, he said.

Both children suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. When they moved in, they had medicine for that, but the Hardys halted that, as well as psychological counseling, acccording to Tori Telfer, a therapist who saw the children at the time and counsels them now.

Instead, they tried to control the children's behavior with a sugar-free, gluten-free diet and discipline, they told authorities.

"It was never our intention," said Dwayne Hardy, "to harm them."

More than 50 of the couple's supporters were in court today. Some asked for mercy.
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Pamela Hardy's brother-in-law, Arnett W. Moore of Tallahassee, said he never saw her or her husband starve or inappropriately discipline the children.

"I never heard Dwayne raise his voice, let alone be neglectful," he said.

The Hardys raised four biological children, now grown, had adopted another boy and had cared for four or five foster children, Moore said.

Pamela Hardy was a loving and caring mother, Moore said, who had planned to spend the rest of her life raising children.

After about nine months in the Hardy home, each now suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, something for which they will require years of therapy, Telfer said.

rstutzman@tribune.com or 407-650-6394.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/crime/os-adoption-torture-sentence-20110801,0,2663002.story?page=2