ELIJAH NEALEY 23 mo / Charged: Jessica Fraraccio, Manassas, VA

Babysitter guilty in Virginia toddler’s death

By Jeremy Borden, Published: OCTOBER 21, 7:22 PM ET

When Jenn and Mike Nealey of Manassas needed to hire a babysitter for their three young children in early 2012, it seemed they had the perfect candidate.

Jessica Fraraccio, 22, was well-known to the Nealeys. The devout Catholic wanted to spend her life around children. She was studying child development and planned to start her own day care someday, she told them.

Fraraccio’s guilty plea to felony murder and child abuse in a Prince William County courtroom Monday was a shocking admission that she had done the unthinkable. She admitted to smothering and killing 23-month-old Elijah Nealey in the summer of 2012.

She couldn’t get the toddler to stop crying, Fraraccio told police, so she picked him up and covered his nose and mouth with her hand.

“She was going to give him lunch,” Mike Nealey, a 40-year-old federal IT contractor, said in an interview. “An hour later he was dead.”

On that August day, the Nealey’s two young daughters, 5 and 7, went to a neighborhood park with their grandmother. It was about noon, and Elijah stayed behind with Fraraccio because he was due for a nap.

An hour or two later, Fraraccio called 911. Elijah was unconscious, and she was performing CPR. By the time paramedics arrived, it was too late. He never woke up.

At first, Fraraccio said the boy had slipped in the tub and hit his head, but months later she told police that wasn’t true, Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Teresa A. Polinske said in court.

In the end, Fraraccio told police that Elijah was upset when the others left for the park and stood by the window and cried, Polinske said.

Fraraccio became frustrated with his crying. When Elijah sat down on a small chair at a play table, Fraraccio pulled the chair out from under him, Polinske said. The boy hit his head on the table and floor.

“He was screaming and crying,” Fraraccio told police, according to the prosecutor.

Fraraccio then picked Elijah up and carried him upside down with her hand over his nose and mouth and walked him around the house, the prosecutor said. At some point, he bit her finger. “His last defense,” Fraraccio would say later.

The babysitter told police that she put Elijah in the bathtub and began to run water, in hopes he would be okay. The boy vomited and his eyes rolled back. Eventually, she carried him to a bedroom and called for help.

Sandra Drewniak, Fraraccio’s attorney, said in court that her client never intended to kill Elijah and has shown “extreme remorse.”

As part of a plea deal, prosecutors dropped a child abuse charge from a separate incident. She will serve a minimum of seven years in prison and could receive up to 50 years. Her sentencing is set for January.

For months after Elijah’s death, the Nealeys believed Fraraccio’s original story that their son had fallen in the tub. Mike Nealey said he wondered what would have happened if he had put in a rubber mat on the tub floor. He also blamed his son — why wasn’t he more careful?

The Nealeys’ relationship with Fraraccio began when Jenn Nealey was laid up after surgery in January 2012. She needed help with the children as she recovered. Jessica fit the bill, especially because the Nealeys knew her parents.

The babysitter was shy at first, Jenn Nealey said. Soon, though, Fraraccio began to engage the kids. She would show them how to bake and oversee living-room dance parties.

Her parents, Paul and Mary Fraraccio, declined to comment Monday.

Friends and family, in interviews and letters filed with the court, said they know Fraraccio as a kind and giving person.

John Stine’s children became friends with Fraraccio when she attended Holy Family Academy in Manassas, he said in a recent interview. Stine was impressed with the creative, outgoing and friendly girl. She liked to take photos with an older camera and collected the photos in a scrapbook. Others said in letters that Fraraccio likes to sew and bake and volunteered at the library and nursing homes.

“She is incapable of wishing evil; in high school, she wouldn’t even gossip about the girls everyone ‘hated,’ ” one friend wrote in a letter to the court.

Stine said Fraraccio was in anguish over the crime.

Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Paul B. Ebert (D) said he has dealt with many ­cases in which babies have been accidentally shaken to death. Fraraccio’s actions — smothering Elijah to make him be quiet and accidentally killing him — were particularly egregious, he said. Still, he added: “You don’t think a babysitter who is as personable and caring as she appeared to be would do something like that.”

The Nealeys said the memory of their son is constant. In their Manassas home — they have moved from their old place, in part because of what happened — the street sign “Elijah Way” sits on the mantel. Next to it, there’s a drawing of Elijah reproduced from a photo. In it, the boy is wearing a fedora and has a slight grin — a pose that reminds Mike Nealey of his grandfather.

Elijah was beginning to express himself, his parents said, and the boy always had a big grin on his face and a desire to say the few words he knew. His favorites were “rrrooaar” and “Piderman,” his way of saying Spider-Man, his family said in an obituary.

When Elijah’s birthday passed in September, Jenn Nealey said she thought about how she should have been enrolling him in preschool. The couple try to remind their daughters of some of the good memories, but don’t dwell on what happened.

His two sisters adored their little brother, the Nealeys said. They often dressed him up like they would their dolls. He didn’t seem to mind, they said.

After the hearing, Mike Nealey said he and his wife felt some measure of relief. They want to move forward.

“We never would have dreamt of this,” he said of the Jessica Fraraccio whom they thought they knew. “I don’t know how to process it.”

http://m.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/babysitter-guilty-in-toddlers-death/2013/10/21/33b7a61e-39c8-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html

I hope she gets the 50 years; she's demented. A child will pull a chair out from under another and think it's funny until he realizes that it hurt that person and was a mean thing to do. For a 22 year old to do this is just sick and completely mean-spirited, it seems like she too was angry that she didn't get to go to the park. And then she marched him around the house upside down by one leg and held his nostrils closed. Just plain mean. I'm glad he at least got to bite her.
He was much more frustrated then she could have been, and he was too little to defend himself.

This cannot by the wildest imagination be interpreted as smothering him out of frustration because he was crying. Poor, sad little boy just wanted to go with his sisters and GM to the park.

Of course I also think he should have been included in the outing- the nap could have waited.

Manassas Babysitter Who Murdered Toddler Sentenced

  January 13, 2014 at 08:18 PM



Jessica Fraraccio was sentenced Monday on charges related to a 23-month-old death. (Patch file.)

A woman who pleaded guilty to smothering her 23-month-old babysitting charge will serve five years in prison for the crime. 

Jessica Fraraccio, 22, of Manassas pleaded guilty in October to felony child abuse and felony murder charges in connection with the August 2012 death of 23-month-old Elijah Nealey at his family's Manassas home. 

On Monday, Jan 13,  Fraraccio was sentenced to 50 years in prison—the maximum penalty under the law— but all but five of those years are suspended, according to an NBC report. 

Fraraccio was arrested in March about seven months after Elijah's death. Police said an investigation revealed the boy died of suffocation. 

At some point, Fraraccio told police she’d smothered Elijah by putting her hand over his mouth because he was misbehaving as she tried to feed him, Michael Nealey told Patch in an earlier report.

http://manassas.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/baby-sister-who-murdered-toddler-sentenced

Va. Babysitter gets 5 years for toddler's murder

9:53 PM, Jan 13, 2014

MANASSAS, Va. (WUSA9) -- Shock and outrage in Manassas after a judge gave a young woman who murdered a Manassas toddler a relatively light sentence behind bars.

Elijah Nealey was 23 months old on August 22, 2013 when he was murdered by his young babysitter. Twenty-two-year-old Jessica Fraraccio pleaded guilty and was facing 50 years in prison.

But today, Prince William County Circuit Judge J. Howe Brown gave her only five years behind bars.

"We're pretty shocked by the leniency of the judge. I can't say justice was served today," said Elijah's father, Mike Nealey.

He and his wife Jen booth took the stand during the sentencing hearing. They said their only son was an awesome, happy little boy who loved Spiderman, dinosaurs and everyone he met. In painful detail, they each recalled the day they learned their son had died.

Fraraccio had originally told police that Elijah slipped and fell in the bathtub. Seven months later, she confessed to causing his death. The prosecutor said Fraraccio told police that she was angry and frustrated and pulled the boy's small chair out from under him, causing him to hit his head. She then picked up the child by his feet, and banged his head as she walked with him. Then, Fraraccio said she put her hand over the boy's mouth and nose, preventing him from breathing. Elijah Nealey died of suffocation.

Mike asked Judge Brown to "punish her for what she did to the fullest extent the law will allow...she does not deserve to live out her life, like he could not."

Jennifer Nealey talked about the daily fear she now has for her two surviving children, two young daughters, worried "I'm going to get a phone call that something has happened to them."

She said she's had to lie to her girls about Fraraccio but that she knew someday she would have to tell them the truth.

"They're going to have to know that there are monsters in this world," and that their beloved babysitter killed their brother, she said. She asked the judge to send her to prison "for as long as possible."

The defense emphasized Fraraccio's clean record, with not even one traffic ticket. They called a licensed professional counselor who said Fraraccio showed no sign of being a sociopath and was a kind, passive person. He said he believed she must have endured some kind of abuse to act out so violently.

Defense attorney Sandra Drewniak called the incident an accident and compared it to shaken baby syndrome. She asked the court for mercy and compassion.

Prosecutor Teresa Polinske told the court what Fraraccio did was "pure, inexcusable evil" and asked for the maximum 40 years for the murder count and 10 years for child abuse.

Fraraccio stood and asked for "forgiveness from the court, God, my parents and the Nealeys... I want to tell the Nealeys how truly sorry I am."

Fraraccio said she had taken responsibility for she she'd done and hoped her punishment would help bring closure and healing to the Nealeys.

Judge Brown said he had put a lot of thought into the punishment, one that would be appropriate for the severity of the crime, honor Elijah and treat Fraraccio like a monster, because he said she isn't.

He sentenced her to a total of 50 years, with 45 years suspended, which is five behind bars. Fraraccio will be out when she's 26 years old.

Judge Brown also ordered Fraraccio to never have any contact with children, unless they are her own, and he ordered her to send a donation to the charity of her choice, in memory of Elijah, every year for the rest of her life on Aug. 22, the day she killed the little boy.

The sentence is reminiscent of the one given to Kevin Kelly who was convicted in the negligent death of his 13th and youngest child, Francis, by leaving her in a hot van for an entire day. Defense attorneys said Kelly had written a letter to the court in this case in support of Fraraccio.

Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert said he was surprised by the sentenced.

http://www.wusa9.com/news/article/289442/373/Va-Babysitter-gets-5-years-for-toddlers-murder
Written by Peggy Fox

What a miscarriage of justice.  This judge should not be sitting in a courtroom.  She'll get paroled and only spend a year or two in prison and this poor little baby is forever dead.                

I cannot imagine how his parents feel knowing the judge placed so little value on their son's life, the same as his murderer did.

"Prosecutor Teresa Polinske told the court what Fraraccio did was "pure, inexcusable evil""      

She should have to stay in jail until she is too old to have children of her own. This is truly a travesty of 'justice' (so-called). My heart goes out to Elijah's parents.

I'm upset over this one. It cannot in any way be compared to the frustration of a young man shaking a crying infant. And so what if she never even had a traffic ticket - she murdered a baby, what do traffic tickets have to do with it? Still   

Ladibug, this one upsets me also.  This judge should be removed from the bench.