By Jeff Jardine, The Modesto Bee, Calif.
Nov. 16–How this could happen? How could anyone beat a 3-year-old girl and torture her nearly to death? How could that little girl endure several months of heinous physical and mental abuse when she should have been basking in the love and nurturing every child deserves? And will she ever be able to trust an adult — any adult — again? The girl is in a hospital bed in Oakland, clinging to life in the safest place she’s been in months. You hope she somehow understands no one there will beat her with an electric cord, as authorities suspect her father and stepmother did. You hope she can resist flinching in fear whenever a nurse comes to check her vital signs. You hope she knows that no one there will dunk her in ice water or pour scalding-hot liquids on her again, as police believe her father and stepmother did. You hope she’ll never again cower in fear that someone will impose physical size and maniacal rage upon her frail, battered body. You want her youth — not the brain damage doctors fear she’s suffered — to be the reason she might erase this sordid episode from her mind. “She’s 3 years old,” said Steve Carmichael, a psychologist in Modesto. “The human brain and mind has the ability to minimize it. Memories are emotionally based. A younger child, in some ways, is protected by the developmental stage.” Even so, he said, the girl faces enormous challenges, not the least of which is surviving her injuries. She’ll be placed at some point in the custody of another family, and the stability of that home will be vital to her recovery, Carmichael said. “The kid is going to need so much care and helping and nurturing,” he said. “The primary care people will have to almost be saintlike.” To a toddler tortured for months, saintlike would be the 180-degree opposite of the parenting she’s obviously endured. Police said father Terry Ghiamba Indula and Chandry Jones Indula — his wife and the girl’s stepmother — have admitted to causing the toddler’s injuries. They will return Monday morning to Stanislaus County Superior Court, where they’ll have attorneys assigned before entering pleas. Sadly, we’ve had to ask the same kinds of questions — how? why? — too many other times here in the valley. What compelled Josephine Origel to kill little Megan Mendez and bury her in the back yard in late 1998? What demons within enabled Origel to smile while being given a prison sentence of 25 years to life and show no remorse whatsoever? What compelled Steven Vincent Howell to injure his year-old baby so badly that she died? What compelled parents in several other cases to become such monsters toward their children? Carmichael knows only what he’s read about the Indula case. But having conducted numerous child custody evaluations during his career, he’s dealt with many abusive parents. “They’re so impulse-driven that they can’t stop their anger and frustration at little children,” he said. “They’re immature themselves, and they look at these little children as little adults and expect them to act like adults.” Jean Ford was the great aunt of Megan Mendez, a girl authorities believe was beaten to death in late 1998 by Josephine Origel. Her husband, Margarito Origel, received a six-year sentence and was later deported to Mexico. Authorities found Megan’s body buried in the Origels’ back yard. She would have been either 4 or 5 when she was killed. Ford said there’s no possible explanation for abusing and murdering a child, and nothing she heard during the trial explained what might have driven Josephine Origel. “I don’t know why anybody would be that cruel,” Ford said. “Why didn’t she just turn (Megan) in and let someone else have her? I think she harmed her so much she couldn’t turn her in (before killing the girl). That’s all I can figure.” Just hearing about the Indula case brought back the pain of Megan’s murder, Ford said. “It has to be sadistic people who would do that,” Ford said. A child in an Oakland hospital is struggling to remain living proof. Jeff Jardine’s column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays in Local News. He can be reached at 578-2383 or [email protected].
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Modesto Bee, Calif.
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