Child Abuse

Months before the body of a beaten 6-year-old boy was found on the floor of his home last week, strong evidence existed to suggest that he was the victim of sustained abuse at the hands of the man now accused of killing him, according to documents obtained by The Times. Authorities on Wednesday issued a murder warrant for Marcas Fisher, who police believe beat his ex-girlfriend's son, Dae'von Bailey, to death a week ago.

A Bakersfield man with a history of drug abuse remained jailed Monday after allegedly biting out one of his 4-year-old son's eyes and mutilating the other. Angel Vidal Mendoza, 34, has been charged with mayhem, torture, child cruelty and inflicting an injury to a child in the alleged attack on his son. Bakersfield police said in a search warrant that the child told investigators, "My daddy ate my eyes." Police said Mendoza appeared to be under the influence of PCP after the April 28 incident.

A polygamist who tortured, starved, imprisoned and beat his wives and children for decades was sentenced to seven life terms in prison Friday by a judge who said the man's "reign of terror" warranted the harshest punishment available. Mansa Musa Muhummed, 55, spoke before sentencing and denied ever mistreating his three wives and 19 children. "I never tortured anyone," he told Riverside County Superior Court Judge F. Paul Dickerson III. "I don't know where that came from."

Officials at a clinic that treated Dae'von Bailey six weeks before he was found beaten to death said Friday that their staff had warned social workers he might be an abuse victim, contradicting an account by the Los Angeles County child welfare department about how it dealt with the abuse allegations.

A 4-year-old boy killed last month by his mother at their Highland Park home had been the subject of a botched child-abuse investigation, Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina said Tuesday. The mother committed suicide after decapitating her young son with a kitchen knife, according to police.

A 6-year-old boy whose battered body was found on the floor of a South Los Angeles home was the subject of roughly a dozen calls to Los Angeles County's child abuse hotline alleging abuse or neglect, a county official briefed on the case told The Times on Friday. Dae'von Bailey had injuries that suggested blows or other trauma over an extended period of time, said Lt. Vincent Neglia of the LAPD's Abused Child Section.

Responding to a long-running pattern of child abuse deaths that might have been prevented, Los Angeles County supervisors Tuesday will consider a renewed attempt to ease communication among agencies that deal with troubled families. The proposal calls for an interlinked computer system that would expand child abuse investigators' ability to access records showing a family's criminal, educational and medical histories, including critical clues about dangers faced by children.

Two women who brutally abused a 5-year-old boy will go to prison to serve lengthy sentences under a plea deal reached Friday. Starkeisha Brown, 26, the child's mother, and 22-year-old Krystal Denise Matthews, Brown's live-in girlfriend, pleaded no contest to corporal injury, dissuading a witness and great bodily injury to a child under 5. Prosecutors dropped other charges of child abuse, conspiracy, conspiracy to dissuade a witness and...

For more than a year after a 15-year-old Lake Los Angeles boy shot himself to death, authorities have been building a case against his grandfather for abuse that they say prompted the suicide, including hitting the teen with a baseball bat. Greg Smith killed himself with a shotgun after grandfather Willie Davis beat him with an aluminum bat for not making his bed neatly enough, according to testimony by Davis' 16-year-old son, who also lived in the house and witnessed the Aug. 29, 2006, attack.

With tears streaming down her cheeks, Sheila Marie Sikat turned to search the sea of faces in a crowded Santa Ana courtroom Friday. "I'm sorry," she whispered to a sister, locking eyes as they both wept.