Custodial dad, girlfriend charged with beating 5-year-old child (Monroe County, Pennsylvania)

Poorly written and edited account as the woman is sometimes referred to as a "girlfriend" and sometimes as a "stepmother." At any rate, a close reading shows that this is a custodial father--the child lives with him--and that the woman in question is not the child's mother.

Left unsaid, however, is how and why an apparently borderline homeless abuser managed to get custody of a 5-year-old girl. What happened to her mother? As usual, total media silence.

http://www.poconorecord.com/article/20160527/NEWS/160529591

Man accused of beating child in hotel and car

By Beth Brelje Posted May. 27, 2016 at 9:52 AM

A man who was living in a local hotel with his girlfriend and 5-year-old daughter has been charged with beating the child.

Ronald Alvin Lewis is charged after the child was discovered with two black eyes, bruising from the bridge of her nose to the right temple of the eyebrow and swelling in her eye, says a criminal complaint from state police at Swiftwater.

On April 25, the child was interviewed by a prosecuting detective in Union County, New Jersey, where she was staying with her aunt.

The child was living with her father and stepmother in a Pennsylvania hotel. The affidavit did not indicate the hotel or municipality where this happened.

The child described two violent incidents during which her father hit her with his hands and kicked her and at one point in the interview told the detective, “My dad was hitting me and I got wet because he punched my pee out … then I cried.”

The first assault allegedly happened when the child was in a vehicle with her father and his girlfriend, the child said. Her father hit her in the stomach because she was not listening.

The second assault allegedly happened in the hotel room when, she told police, her father grabbed her, placed her on the floor on her back and hit her in the leg. He then told her to put on her pajamas and she did. Then he allegedly hit her again. The child began bleeding from her nose so he threw her out of the hotel room because she was bleeding on the floor.

The girl got into the family’s vehicle and recalled having blood in her mouth. Then her father “dragged” her out of the vehicle, the complaint says.

The child told the detective that her father hit her on the back of her head which caused her to “get purple things” under her eyes — two black eyes. A photo of the child showed this.

On April 28, the child’s aunt was interviewed. She told the investigator that Lewis called her and said, “I hit her bad.”

The aunt called the girlfriend to get more information and then received a photo of the child with two black eyes.

The aunt drove to Pennsylvania, picked up the child and drove her to her own home in New Jersey, then made a report to the Pennsylvania Child Abuse Hotline, 800-932-0313.

State police issued a warrant for Lewis on May 24 on charges of assault and endangering welfare of children.

He was being held in Monroe County Correctional Facility on $25,000 bail as of Friday.