Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere

A Great Falls woman was charged with felony criminal endangerment after allegedly leaving her 2-year-old son in an abandoned car overnight as snow fell and temperatures dropped to 32 degrees.

Police found the toddler at about 11 a.m. Wednesday. The boy was shivering uncontrollably after enduring 14 hours in the cold, according to documents released Thursday during the initial court appearance of the mother, Jessi Lynn Parrish, 25.

A prosecutor told a judge Wednesday that fatal head injuries suffered by a 6-week-old infant were similar to the injuries she would have received had she been ejected from a vehicle at 50 or 60 mph.

"This baby never had a chance, your honor," Deputy County Attorney Juli Pierce told Judge Pedro Hernandez.

Robert Hans Hoffman, 20, is accused of crushing Christine Lynn Hoffman's skull after a day of heavy drinking. Hoffman made his first court appearance Wednesday on a charge of deliberate homicide. He was arrested Tuesday night.

A man accused of sexually assaulting nine boys with physical or mental disabilities told a judge that having sex with children is a sacred ritual protected by civil rights laws.

Phillip Distasio, who said he is the leader of a church called Arcadian Fields Ministries, represented himself at his pretrial hearing Wednesday. He is charged with 74 counts including rape, pandering obscenity to minors and corrupting another with drugs.

Two emaciated girls who told police they ate only when their father wasn’t traveling on business were hospitalized after police found them in an advanced state of starvation.

“It’s the worst case of malnutrition I’ve ever seen,” said police Lt. E.J. Bastian. The 6- and 7-year-old girls were found Friday in a home’s basement, were they were kept.

The girls’ stepmother, whose biological children were found healthy and well-fed upstairs, was taken in for questioning. Their father, traveling on business, was to be questioned when he returned, police said.

Two Billings women are accused of burning an 18-month-old boy with cigarettes and causing other serious injuries that could prove fatal, a county prosecutor said at the women's court appearance Tuesday.

Stephanie Janie Plainbull, 22, and Mary Rose Plainbull, 49, were charged with felony aggravated assault by accountability for what Deputy County Attorney Laura Watson described as a "horrific" case of child abuse.

A caregiver at Opportunity Resources Inc. faces criminal charges for molesting a developmentally disabled woman at work and in her apartment.

George S. Vanderburg, 63, of Arlee worked for nine years at the private, nonprofit organization that provides support for more than 350 people with disabilities. He was placed on administrative leave in December, pending the results of the investigation.

A Broward County grand jury indicted a mother and grandmother on first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse charges on Thursday for the scalding death of 3-year-old Jaquez Mason, state prosecutors said.

Former Riverside police officer Adam James Brown pleaded no contest Friday to 65 criminal charges stemming from alleged sex acts with four Riverside County boys under the age of 14.

Carson City Sheriff Ken Furlong says he's amazed by the survival of two emaciated children who say they were locked in an apartment bathroom and starved for the past five years.

When the siblings were found Thursday, the 16-year-old girl weighed about 40 pounds, and her 11-year-old brother weighed about 30 pounds. The pair were in stable condition Sunday at a hospital, while their grandmother, mother and the mother's boyfriend were in jail.

Their grandmother, Esther Rios, 56; mother, Regina Rios, 33; and the mother's boyfriend, Tomas Granados, 33, were jailed on suspicion of child abuse or neglect and false imprisonment in lieu of $100,000 bail.

A California couple left their 5- and 9-year-old children home alone for the weekend while they went to gamble in Las Vegas.