For abusing 11 children in Florida...
cFrancis Joseph | 7:59 pm
Published: February 10th, 2009
Judith Leekin...sentenced to 20
years in Florida prison.
Francis Joseph | 7:59 pm
A Trinidadian woman, who was sentenced to 11 years in New York for fraud last year, has been sentenced to a further 20 years in Florida for abusing 11 disabled children she adopted. Judith Leekin was accused of abusing the disabled children she adopted, while pocketing more than US$1 million in subsidies.
Florida Circuit Judge Robert Belanger described Leekin's actions as “reprehensible” and handed down the maximum punishment allowed in the plea agreement with the US. Leekin, 63, pleaded no contest to four counts of aggravated child abuse and four counts of aggravated abuse of disabled adults. The adoptees are now in their mid-teens and 20s. “I’m very sorry,” Leekin said several times during a brief statement to the court.
Leekin was arrested in July 2007 after police were called to a supermarket in Florida where authorities said she had abandoned an 18-year-old girl. Authorities said they found the adopted children had been held like prisoners in Leekin’s home, often handcuffed together and forced to soil themselves because they were not allowed to use the bathroom. They said they had never seen a doctor or a dentist and had not been allowed to attend school or leave the house. All were near starvation when they were found. Leekin used four aliases to adopt from different agencies and created fake report cards to show the children’s progress, even though they were not attending school, according to court records and officials. The children were adopted in New York City before Leekin moved to Florida in 1998.
The children, now ages 17 to 29, suffer from a variety of severe mental and physical disabilities, including autism and Down’s syndrome. Leekin began adopting them in 1988, when she lived in New York City. A decade later, she moved to Port St Lucie, Florida. Prosecutors said the high school dropout from Trinidad lived lavishly while forcing the adopted children to sleep on the floor of a storage room next to a garage and banning them from entering the house except to use the bathroom or kitchen. Attorney Howard M Talenfeld, speaking on behalf of ten of the children, told the judge that none of the children could testify before him because they were too damaged by the abuse.
Nine of the children are now in foster or group homes. Another lives on his own in Florida. One child is missing and presumed dead. Talenfeld said one child was afraid to face Leekin again while five others who were capable of speaking were not brought before the court because social services professionals advised that they would be further emotionally and psychologically damaged by the experience. New York City records show she received more than US$1.2 million in subsidies for the disabled children she had adopted. Leekin, who moved to US from Trinidad, was sentenced in July in New York Federal Court to nearly 11 years in prison for fraud. That sentence will run concurrently with the Florida prison term.
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