||| Gwinnett Police |||
A Gwinnett County mother and stepfather are charged with dozens of counts of child cruelty and aggravated battery for their shocking crimes against a 13-year-old child which the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s office describes as “astounding.”
Investigators said Rimmon Lewis, 32, and Angela Strothers, 33, brutally beat and severely disfigured parts of the child’s body and forced her to live in inhumane conditions.
Strothers happens to be the biological mother of the child, while Lewis is the stepdad. A grand jury indicted Strothers and Lewis in November. The indictment says that Lewis seriously disfigured the girl’s back and feet by striking her “repeatedly with the leg of a child’s table and a black leather belt.”
The beatings were so hard and took place often that they eventually caused “prolonged numbness” and immobility in the child in some cases. The abuse could have lasted for a number of years.
Lewis has done other horrific acts against the helpless child including horribly disfiguring her mouth by pushing his thumbs into her mouth… “with such force as to split the corners of her mouth.” The actions left the corners of the girl’s mouth scarred. The authorities said Lewis mete out the “punishment” for the unbelievable fact that the girl would stutter around him.
The couple also subjected the poor girl to torture methods including locking her in a laundry room for hours on end and forcing her to meet their “standards” including having to stand barefoot on food cans while writing a sentence 1,000 times.
She was locked in the laundry room for so long that she urinated on herself. The indictment also says in detail that the couple would beat her with a table leg and “forced to sleep in her urine-soaked clothing and go to school wearing the same urine-soaked clothing.”
In some instances, the child was dangerously forced to drink laundry detergent. She was also ordered to take very hot or very cold baths. The indictment indicates that the child was subject to “excessive physical pain” through various beatings detailed in the narrative charges.
Someone in school finally noticed that the girl was injured and that she’s always hungry throughout the year. The person contacted the Gwinnett police who investigated and initially charged the couple only with one count of child cruelty.
Interviews with district attorney investigators revealed more horrifying details of the cruelty and abuse. Additional charges were made against the couple.
There were four other younger boys in the house at the time of the abuse but only the girl was subjected to such abuse and cruelty. She was not even allowed to eat meals with them, often she had to make do with leftover meals, and worse was even forced to eat cat food at times.
The authorities say it is amazing that the girl survived it all, although it would probably take years for her to fully recover and heal.
Lewis is back in jail after violating the terms of probation for child abuse case he was involved in 2014. There is a bench warrant for Strothers’ arrest.
The victim and the four other children are in the custody of authorities.
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