Custodial dad, step enter plea deal for attempted murder, torture of 5-year-old daughter (Bakersfield, California)

Yet another news account where the father's obvious custodial status is airbrushed away, and the mother "disappeared."

Clearly Daddy and the step could not have induced severe malnutrition in a shared custody situation--not unless the mother, through some weird congruence, was okay with the same. In which case she would have been arrested too.

But that didn't happen. In fact, we have no idea of what happened to Mom. I spot checked previously published articles on this case, and they totally ignore the mother as well. It's as if she had never existed; she has been neatly excised from history.

So how did this torture Daddy get full custody of this child? Who gave it to him? What happened to the mother? Is she still alive? Deceased? What?

Dad is identified as JESSE BROWN.

http://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/2-sentenced-for-child-abuse

2 Sentenced for child abuse

By: Mindy Wyatt

Posted: 4:25 PM, Jun 10, 2015 Updated: 4:39 PM, Jun 10, 2015

A couple that faced child abuse charges that entered a plea deal back in March was sentenced this morning in Superior Court.

The father of the child Jesse Brown and the step-mother Virginia Rodriguez faced a judge to hear their sentence. The couple were facing attempted murder charges and torture charges in the abuse of a 5-year-old girl, but entered a plea of no contest to willful cruelty to a child and inflicting injury on a child.

Jesse Brown received a ten year and four month sentence and Virginia Rodriguez was sentenced to four years.

On Feb. 23 Bakersfield police responded to a home and found a 5-year-old girl unconscious. Police said she appeared to have cigarette burns and was extremely malnourished. The 5-year-old weighed 25 pounds.

Documents said the girl had old and new injuries to the head, wrists and ankles. #The girl was still in the hospital three days later. The examining doctor said the girl had been tortured and abused for an extended amount of time.

A second child was taken into protective custody, officials said.