Jade Jacobs has been found guilty of child cruelty and false imprisonment for starving her then-15-year-old autistic daughter and locking her in a closet. William Anthony Brown, Jacobs’ husband and the child’s stepfather, was found not guilty.
Jacobs looked at her hands and appeared emotional after the verdict was read Thursday evening in a Gwinnett County courtroom. Brown stared straight ahead, stoic.
Sentencing for Jacobs was deferred, but she was immediately taken into custody.
Jacobs could face up to 50 years in prison. She was found guilty of two child cruelty charges, carrying sentences between 5 and 20 years; along with one false imprisonment charge, which carries punishment between one and 10 years.
Prosecutor Bobby Wolf described what both were charged with as “an unimaginable and horrifying crime inflicted on the most innocent of victims,” the severely developmentally disabled girl, who is now 17. She had bedsores on her ankles, knees and hips, leading a doctor to believe the girl had been kept in a cage. She had actually been kept in a 5-foot-by-8-foot closet in the family’s Lawrenceville home. Police found the closet with feces smeared on the walls and a mat soaked in urine.
The AJC is not naming the girl because she is a minor and a victim of abuse. She is in custody of a foster family in Middle Georgia.
Jacobs and Brown were arrested after Jacobs brought the child to the emergency room in August 2014. The child had been aggressive and eating her own feces, which prompted Jacobs to call 911. The girl was 66 pounds when she arrived at Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, 19 pounds lighter than she was when school ended in May. Her weight at 15 years old was that of a normal 9-year-old, a doctor testified last week.
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The girl showed clinical signs of starvation, including suffering refeeding syndrome when she was fed at the hospital, Dr. Stephen Messner testified during the trial. Refeeding syndrome occurs when a starving person begins to eat again, but eats too quickly and causes an electrolyte shift that can be dangerous.
Jacobs’ defense claimed that she was trying the best she could to control an increasingly aggressive and troubled child. Jacobs struggled to get state agencies, therapists and doctors to provide the help she needed; one agency did not approve her request for services until November 2014, when she had already been in jail for three months.
Brown, Jacobs’ husband and the child’s stepfather, was a long-haul trucker on the road for up to two weeks at a time, putting him out of control of most of the parenting decisions, his defense argued. A taped phone call with a Gwinnett County detective showed Brown reacting with apparent surprise when he was asked if he knew that the girl was being kept in a closet.
Judge Keith Miles said the trial was “very difficult” as he thanked the jury for spending nearly two weeks on the case.
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