Dad arrested for beating daughter (Winfield, West Virginia)

This sure sounds like a custodial/visitation situation. Notice that there is NO MENTION of a mother in this home, and that the girl had to run to a neighbor's for help. The comments mention a GAL, which makes me really think that dad MICHAEL TIMOTHY CRIST had a lot of rights that he shouldn't have had. This guy even broke down the neighbor's front door to further assault this child! Talk about out of control!

http://sundaygazettemail.com/News/201108080753

August 8, 2011
Pliny man arrested on child abuse charges

By Staff reports
The Charleston Gazette

WINFIELD, W.Va. -- A Pliny man was arrested over the weekend after allegedly hitting his daughter, pulling her hair and spitting snuff in her face.

Michael Timothy Crist, 46, faces charges of child abuse resulting in injury and several other charges after Saturday's alleged altercation on Honeycut Road, according to a criminal complaint filed in Putnam County Magistrate Court.

Crist's daughter, a juvenile, told Putnam County Sheriff's Deputy D.A. Hammonds that her father began yelling at her and spit snuff into her face, according to the complaint.

The girl said she lay on the ground in a fetal position, but her father then allegedly laid across her and began striking her with a with a closed fist and pulling her hair according to the complaint.

Hammonds wrote the alleged victim said she lay to attempt to get her father to leave her alone. She told police her father then lay across her and began striking her. The deputy saw several red marks on the girl's arms, legs and shoulders, according to the complaint.

The girl told police she ran to a neighbor's house and hid in a bedroom closet. Police talked to the neighbor, who said the girl told her to "call 911 my dad is trying to kill me," the complaint states.

The neighbor told police she gave the girl her phone and locked the front door. According to the complaint, Crist kicked the neighbor's front door until its frame broke, then found his daughter hiding in the closet and pulled her out.

When Crist saw the deputy arrive, he allegedly told his daughter, "if you talk to them I'll break your [expletive] neck."

Hammonds wrote in the complaint that Crist appeared to have been drinking, and was walking toward the woods when Hammonds apprehended him. The deputy found where the neighbor's door had been broken, and also found a sheath for a hunting knife in Crist's front pocket.

Crist also is charged with domestic violence, domestic assault, burglary and public intoxication. He was being held in the Western Regional Jail Monday on a $30,000 bond.