By Vicky Wedig
Editor
A Town of Bloomfield couple was sentenced to a year in the Walworth County Jail for abusing their six adopted children between 2004 and 2011, according to a local news report.
The Lake Geneva Regional News reported last week Kathleen M. and Martin P. O’Brien, both 53, were sentenced Oct. 13 to a year in jail with work-release privileges and three years of extended supervision.
The O’Brien’s were charged in Walworth County Circuit Court in 2012 with a combined 17 criminal offenses – 10 counts of felony child abuse and seven counts of misdemeanor disorderly conduct. The disorderly conduct charges against them were dismissed in February 2013, and a jury convicted them of seven of the felony offenses on July 29.
According to the criminal complaints, the couple’s six adopted children from the Soviet Union, now ages 16, 17, 17, 17, 21 and 22, reported being abused by the couple beginning after they were adopted in 2004 and continuing until 2011. Four of the children – a 10-year-old boy, a 5-year-old boy, a 6-year-old girl and an 11-year-old girl in 2004 – are biological siblings. The other two – a then-6-year-old girl and 6-year-old boy – have the same date of birth.
The children reported being made to stand naked in front of the O’Briens while the O’Briens and their biological children, who were not subject to the same punishments, ate and were punished when they “stole” food, according to the complaint. The children reported being knocked to the ground, slapped, kicked in the groin, sprayed with pepper spray, hit with sticks, pulled by the ears, stabbed in the hand with a pocket knife, picked up by the throat, kneed in the genitals, locked in a room for four to five days, forced to kneel on sharp rocks and in dog feces, made to stand in the snow with bare feet and enclosed in a bin, according to the complaints.
