Wood Dale man gets 32 years for beating boy with studded belt
Frank Westmoreland Jr.’s victim still trembles and wets his pants when he thinks he’s in trouble. The 4-year-old also has nightmares and, once, begged not to be killed after knocking over a glass of water, his foster mom said.
Yet Westmoreland expressed little remorse for beating the 28-pound child with a metal-studded belt, even as he faced sentencing Thursday by a DuPage County judge.
“There was no timeouts when I was small,” the 31-year-old Wood Dale man said. “I didn’t know spanking a kid with a belt was against the law.”
Judge Blanche Hill Fawell called the victim’s injuries “sickening” as she slapped Westmoreland with a 32-year prison term on his second conviction for battering a child.
While delivering the ruling, she held up a photo of cuts and bruises covering the boy’s body and spoke directly to the defendant.
“This is so far beyond anyone’s concept of discipline,” Fawell said. “Even more disgusting to me is the fact that you don’t seem to have any feeling for what you’ve done.”
Westmoreland was charged in late January after a neighbor heard the boy being repeatedly struck and crying out, “I don’t want to die.”
On earlier occasions, Westmoreland also burned the child in hot water and forced him to eat his own feces if he had an accident, the boy’s foster mother testified.
“(He) still has nightmares,” she said of the boy, who also is in physical therapy. “He still wets his pants if he thinks he’s in trouble.”
In a 1999 case, Westmoreland pleaded guilty to shaking his 8-month-old son in Will County, leaving the child with brain injuries that affected his sight, hearing and development. Fawell convicted him of beating the girlfriend’s child after a bench trial in July.
On Thursday, prosecutors Demetri Demopoulos, Enza LaMonica and Anne Therieau sought 35 years for Westmoreland, calling his crimes “nauseating.”
“This is about the systematic torture and abuse of this innocent, helpless, 4-year-old child,” Therieau said. “This precious little child lived in fear. He couldn’t even be safe in his own home.”
Westmoreland must serve nearly 25 years before he is eligible for parole.