CLAYTON COUNTY: Police: Mom aided abuse of daughter

Clayton County police said a Riverdale mother moved out of her marital bed so her husband could sexually assault their daughter there, plied the girl with vodka and ordered her to comply with continued rape and molestation.

The 33-year-old woman is charged with rape, statutory rape, incest, aggravated child molestation, sodomy, enticing a child for indecent purposes and furnishing alcohol to a minor. She is being held without bond in the Clayton County Jail.

Her 32-year-old estranged husband faces the same charges and is being sought by police, police spokeswoman Lt. Rebecca Brown said. Brown said the couple separated after reportedly confessing the crimes to Atlanta police. The man’s whereabouts are unknown.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is withholding the names of the parents to protect the identity of the daughter.

Warrants allege the mother did nothing to stop the assaults on her daughter, telling her to “just lay there and do it” when the girl refused to have sex with her father.

The warrants said the father punished the girl to make her comply, using his “parental authority to make the victim stand upright in the middle of the room until 3 a.m. when the victim grew tired and relented.”

The alleged sexual assaults happened in Riverdale from March to August 2007, according to Magistrate Court warrants. A police report shows the incidents also happened while the family lived in Atlanta, but is unclear on whether the couple was charged there.

Brown said a mother who knows her child is being sexually abused but fails to protect the child is charged with the abuser. Mothers who know about abuse but remove the child from harm are not held accountable, Brown said.

In a Clayton case in 2007, a mother was sentenced to five years’ probation for not protecting her infant daughter from an abusive boyfriend. The boyfriend, who was sentenced to life plus 40 years, molested the child and beat her so badly she was paralyzed from the waist down.

Georgia Department of Human Resources spokeswoman Taka Wiley said investigators look at all aspects of cases, so it is not surprising to find a mother charged with failing to protect her child. “We look at everything where abuse is alleged,” she said, including all adults in the home.