The Adopted BANKS GIRLS - 5 sisters / 4-11 yo (2005) - Moreno Valley CA

The pastor of a church in a
Riverside County strip mall was sentenced to life in state prison
Friday for abusing her five adopted daughters, who were beaten daily,
fed spoiled food and hidden in a garage. Jessica Banks, 65, of
Moreno Vally was sentenced to 36 years and 8 months in prison along
with two consecutive terms of 15 years to life, said Michael Jeandron,
a spokesman for the county district attorney's office. Superior Court Judge Richard Hanscom in Riverside described it as the worst abuse case he had seen. However, the Moreno Valley woman denied any wrongdoing and her attorney said an appeal was planned. Banks
was arrested in June 2005, about a month after one of the sisters, a
bruised and emaciated 6-year-old, was found curled up on the pavement
in front of a tax business at the strip mall. The mall also housed Word of Life Apostolic Church, where Banks was pastor and the children attended school. Her
attorney, James Curtis of Riverside, said it was a storefront church,
"fledgling at best," with only a handful of members. It closed after
her arrest. Authorities say the girls, who ranged in age from 4
to 11 at the time, were forced to wear two layers of diapers and long
dark dresses and lived in a hidden room in Banks' unheated garage. Banks
kicked and beat them daily with cords, sticks, high-heeled shoes,
extension cords and belts, fed them spoiled food, made them take
sleeping pills
and sexually abused two of them with paint sticks, prosecutors claimed. A
jury deliberated fewer than five hours before convicting her in July of
16 felonies, including willful harm or injury to a child, child
endangement, and sexual penetration by force or fear. Banks
became the girls' foster parent in 2000 after they were found to have
been abused by their family. She legally adopted them in 2004. The girls are now with foster families. On Friday, prosecutor Elan Zekster read a letter from the oldest girl, now 15. "Mom,
I know somewhere in your heart you were a nice person. It was not right
what you did to me and my sisters. Mom, I want you to know that I
forgive you and I will be praying for you. But mom, It will never be OK
what you did to me and my sisters," the letter said. Banks told
the court that the girls had a normal life. She also contended that the
girls were mentally disabled and could not have written the letter. "All
the things they said about me are not true," Banks told the judge.
"They're lies. I know it's all a lie... I don't know where all this
stuff comes from." Curtis, her attorney, urged the judge to
give Banks concurrent sentences rather than consecutive ones so that
she would be eligible for parole in seven instead of 14 years. At her age, "it's a death sentence," he said. "I'm
happy she'll spend the rest of her life in jail," said Riverside County
Deputy District Attorney Elan Zektser. "I just hope this sends a
message to others that my office doesn't take child abuse lightly." Curtis
argued that the children were not abused during their early years with
Banks, and in court, he displayed photographs of them at birthday
parties and engaging in other regular activities. "There was substantially a period of time when they had normal lives," he said after the hearing. "This
is a woman who is not a predator, she's not trolling for kids, she's
not abducting kids," he said. "She, in my opinion, was a woman who
simply got overwhelmed and potentially had some sort of mental break." He did not argue in court that she was mentally ill but "that's the only reasonable conclusion," Curtis said. Despite
testimony from the girls and physical evidence, "she still does not
acknowledge that she did anything to these kids," Curtis said. "This is
a defendant who's not seeing the same reality as everybody else." He
said Banks had raised a daughter, now grown, and a niece before
adopting the sisters. She apparently lived on Social Security or other
government funding and government funds supplied to help her raise the
adoptive children, Curtis said. He also argued that child protective agencies were at fault for failing to prevent the abuse. "How
in the hell does a 50-plus-year-old woman who has no children... has no
extended family, no other resources that support her, who in the hell
let her have these kids in the first place and why weren't they
checking on these kids?" he asked.