Husband and Wife Accused of Crimes against Foster Children

A Missoula woman and her husband are in jail charged with up to nine counts of felony assault on a minor and misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child.

According to the charging documents, an 11 year-old child was reported to have bruises on her back, face and arms. According to the Child Protective Division, the child was very thin. There was a lock on the child’s door, a bucket in her room to use as a toilet and another bucket full of hair that had fallen out. There was a surveillance camera in the room. There were two strips of duct tape on the floor where the child was forced to stand to be in view of the camera.

The child stated that when she would vomit, the suspects would rub her face in it and force her to eat it.

Court documents state that Jane Doe and her brother had been in the care of the two suspects since 2013.

At their Missoula Justice Court appearances on Wednesday, Deputy Missoula County Attorney Lacey Lincoln asked Judge Alex Beal for bail to be set at $100,000 each.

A local attorney, Matt Lowy, appearing in Justice Court on behalf of the defendants, asked the judge to lower the bail amounts, since the children had already been removed from the home and there was no more danger to them. He also disputed several of the charges against the couple.

Judge Beal set bail for $10,000 for the male and $5,000 for the female, and charged them not to have any contact with the children or any witnesses in the case. They were also ordered not to have any contact with a dog that, according to court documents, had been trained to bite the children.                .

The defendants were remanded back to the Missoula County Jail.

(In order to protect the names of the victims, KGVO News is not revealing the identities of the suspects.)