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Daughter: Mother should `pay' in incest case

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-06 10:02

HARRISONVILLE, Mo. – The older sister of a girl allegedly molested and impregnated four times by their father said Thursday their mother allowed the abuse and should face more than a child-endangerment charge.

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"I want her to get more charges," the 20-year-old said outside a western Missouri courthouse. "I want her to pay as much as my father. I don't want either of them to get away with a slap on the wrist."

The mother is charged with one count of endangering the welfare of a child. Cass County prosecutors said additional charges were possible but declined to elaborate. The woman is free on $10,000 bond.

The Associated Press is withholding the names of the suspects and other family members to protect the identity of the daughter who was allegedly sexually assaulted. Neither the mother nor the father has entered a plea in the case.

The 47-year-old mother was allowed to miss a scheduled court appearance Thursday; a preliminary hearing was set for March 5. Her public defender, Angela Weatherford, declined to comment on the case.

Her husband, also 47, faces charges including second-degree murder in the death of a boy born in November 2006. The infant is believed to have died months later after not receiving medical treatment for pneumonia.

The baby's remains were found last month in a cooler on a rural property where the family once lived near Harrisonville, a town of about 9,000 people about 40 miles south of Kansas City.

Two other babies the man is suspected of fathering with his now 19-year-old daughter also died. Charges have not been filed in those cases.

The body of one of those babies was found in a different cooler last month on the Harrisonville property. The other infant is believed to have been buried in Oklahoma, where the family briefly lived.

A surviving child — a 3-year-old boy — is in state custody.

The man also is charged with endangering the welfare of a child, statutory rape and two counts each of incest and abandoning a corpse. He is being held on $500,000 bond.

Family members and investigators have said the daughter who had the babies was 13 when the molestation started. She has not been charged with any crime.