Branded the children??? The SEAMANDS Kids - Port Angeles WA

Port Angeles WA ---- Trial is under
way for a Sequim man who is accused of permanently scarring his three
children by branding them like ranch cattle.Mark Seamands is on
trial for two counts of assault for branding his 13- and 15-year-old
sons. He also branded his 18-year-old daughter, but faces no charges
for branding her because she was old enough to give consent.Seamands'
ex-wife reporters that she was horrified 18 months
ago when she saw that Seamands had branded their 13- and 15-year-old
sons and their 18-year-old daughter with the mark "SK," for Seamands'
Kids."My youngest boy, it's on his chest. My middle boy, it's on
his arm and my daughter -- it's on the back of her leg," said Alison
Davis, the children's mother."I don't know if you have seen an
animal being branded, but I have. They squeal; they yell; they scream.
It's nothing pretty," Davis said.Jurors also heard testimony on
Tuesday from the children's grandmother, who described her shock at
seeing the brand."I reached up, put my hand like this and said,
'That must hurt,'" Pam Davis said.Pam Davis said one of the boys
showed her a cell phone video of himself being scarred."And he
held it like this, and I started watching the video of him being branded
and that's when it was too much. I just turned and walked upstairs,"
Pam Davis said.The two boys are expected to testify and are
expected to defend their father. They are reportedly proud of their
brands and do not think their father did anything wrong.It's an
idea their mother and prosecutors reject."I think it's child
abuse in every way shape and form," Alison Davis said.The jury is
expected to see video of the boy being branded.Seamands is also
expected to take the stand and show his own brand.

A Clallam County jury decided Thursday that Mark
J. Seamands -- who branded his two teenage sons -- was innocent of two
counts of felony second-degree assault for searing the boys' skin with a
red-hot branding iron and permanently scarring them.
Sequim
resident Seamands, 39, used a branding iron he made with
3-inch-by-3-inch initials "SK" for "Seamands Kids" to burn the brand on
his then-13-year-old son's upper chest and then-15-year-old son's left
arm on Nov. 25, 2008.
The boys both said they wanted to be
branded.
Seamands also branded his then-18-year-old daughter,
Paige Davis of Boise, Idaho, on the calf. Since she was old enough to
give consent, no charges were filed in her branding.

No
comment
"I don't have any comment," Seamands said Thursday
after hearing the verdict.
If he had been found guilty Seamands,
a road construction worker, could have been sentenced to 12 to 14
months in jail.
The two-day Superior Court trial ended with a
mistrial on two lesser charges of gross misdemeanor fourth-degree
assault when jurors told Judge Brooke S. Taylor they could not reach a
verdict.
Second-degree assault is defined as recklessly
inflicting substantial bodily harm with intent to do so. Fourth degree
assault is an assault that isn't first-, second- or third-degree,
according to state statutes.

Family applauds
A
group of about a dozen family members clapped their approval upon
hearing the not-guilty verdict.
The nine-man, three-woman jury
spent nearly seven hours deliberating the charges Thursday after hearing
closing arguments Wednesday.
The jury decided that Seamands was
not guilty of second-degree assault, then deadlocking six to six on the
lesser charges, jury foreman Arlin Lidstrom of Sequim said in an
interview.
"The jury had difficulty in determining if the father
branding the boys was an assault," Lidstrom said, adding that the jury
believed the act of branding was not necessarily an assault.

No
struggle
"[The verdict] was based on the understanding and
the evidence brought forth that there was no struggle, it was not done
against their will, there was no maliciousness intended and they were
careful in putting it all together to do this," Lidstrom added.
"Our
definition of assault in the second degree would be like a felony-type
thing where it would be similar to, 'I was jumped in an alleyway, held
down and they branded me.'"
Seamands had said in an interview
with police that led to the charges that branding the "SK" was "a family
thing" he did on livestock as a child.
He compared the practice
to ear-piercing and said that getting hit with a water balloon "hurts
worse."
Seamands said in testimony that he had researched the
practice on the Internet, had purchased ointment with advice from a drug
store employee to have a friend perform the procedure on himself and
had not intended to brand his boys until they insisted he do so.

Unusual
case
"It goes without saying that this is a most unusual
case with most unusual facts," Judge Taylor had told the jury Wednesday
when the testimony portion of the trial concluded.
"Whether this
is or is not a crime turns to a large extent on whether the result was
disfigurement."
The branding caused second-degree burns and
scarring on the boys, testified Dr. Laura Bullen of Peninsula Children's
Clinic.
Deputy Prosecuting Attorney John Troberg and lawyer
Loren Oakley of the county Public Defender's Office both agreed that
Seamands branded his children, but differed in their presentation of the
context of the act.

Did not protect children
Troberg
had compared what Seamands did to branding livestock, claiming the
father acted irresponsibly in not protecting his sons from harm.
"Clearly
I'm disappointed," Troberg said, sitting outside the courtroom after
the verdict.
"But this is why we have juries. Juries are the
conscience of the community. They go a long way to establishing
community standards for what is acceptable conduct."
The verdict
does not mean that parents have a right to brand their children if their
children consent, Troberg said.
"I don't think this jury is
giving a broad brush to child branding at all," he added.
"The
facts of this specific case are that they did not want to convict him of
assault in the second degree."
Oakley, during his own closing
arguments, had compared the branding to circumcision and said
disfigurement was a relative term.

'Different strokes'
"Different
strokes for different folks," he had told the jury.
The boys
were branded "at their request," Oakley said after the trial.
"It
has no precedential value for anyone else other than Mr. Seamands in
that the second-degree assault charge is over with," he added.
Seamands'
daughter Davis and her younger brother said immediately after the
verdict they had been confident the jury would find their father
innocent.
"I knew this was how it would come out," the younger
son said, reiterating from his trial testimony that he had wanted to be
branded.
"We were not forced to do it at all," the teenager said.
During
the trial, Davis had called the branding an act that was intended to
"bond" the family while her father and mother were getting divorced.
The
mother was "horrified" her sons were branded, the mother had told
police.
A status hearing on the fourth-degree charges against
Seamands will be at 1:30 p.m. May 28, though after the trial, Troberg
said pursuing those charges may not be worth the monetary cost or in the
family's "best interests."