Police say 2 teens beat mentally challenged cousin

EAST ST. LOUIS, _ A 34-year-old woman with the mental capacity of a 6-year-old was virtually defenseless to beatings inflicted by live-in, teenage cousins, and could not cry out for help in a home that had no telephone, investigators say.

She weathered the floggings for more than a year, absorbing blows from everything from a broom to iron pipe and extension cord -- all of it directed by an aunt whose death last week from a massive heart attack left the victim an escape hatch, police said.

On Tuesday, two days after police entered the picture, the victim was hospitalized with broken bones, bruising and malnutrition that sent her weight below 100 pounds. But she was expected to recover from the ordeal that an investigator found quite easy to categorize.

"This is bizarre," police Detective Michael Floore told reporters, after prosecutors charged two of the victim's cousins with aggravated battery.

Police say the victim and three of her cousins -- ages 17, 16 and 13 -- lived with the aunt and an uncle. The aunt directed the beatings because the victim gave the woman "a hard time" and didn't wash the dishes, they said.

Additionally, Floore said, the aunt "had a bad heart and couldn't do (the beatings)" herself.

The aunt's husband tried to intervene, "but his wife turned against him," Floore said.

"He had a bad heart himself, so he left it alone," the investigator said.

St. Clair County prosecutors charged 17-year-old Davion Cutler on Tuesday with aggravated battery, accusing him in the criminal complaint of striking the victim on the back with an extension cord. He was jailed on $50,000 bond, and it was not immediately clear if he had an attorney.

Davion Cutler's 16-year-old brother was charged with battery as a juvenile and was in youth detention, his name not released because of his age. Police also were looking for the boys' 13-year-old sister although they did not say whether she was involved in the abuse.

Police said they expect they will ask prosecutors within days for abuse-related charges against other adults who lived in the house.

The abuse surfaced Sunday, when workers at a hospital told police they were treating a malnourished, mentally challenged woman with beating-related injuries, investigators said.

When police went to the home, the teenagers tried to flee. But officers quickly caught Cutler and his brother, who admitted they had beaten the victim with a broom, pipe and "a switch," police Detective Orlando Ward said.

The two teenage boys, without being encouraged, also beat the 13-year-old girl several times a day, Floore said.

The victim told police the home had no telephone, crimping her ability to call out for help, Floore said.

"She said she sat on the front porch a few times but would never tell anybody about what was going on, mostly because she was mentally challenged and didn't know what to do actually," Floore said. "She can talk, but she's slow capacity. She may have the mind of a 6-year-old."

On Tuesday, she was slowly on the mend.

"Overall, she's doing better," Ward said. "Her health is still poor, but she's improving every day."

No one answered the door Tuesday at the two-story, white-sided home, where the porch was littered with dining chairs -- some stacked upside down -- near a headless, 4-foot-tall Greek statue. The front lawn was scorched, reduced to little more than a large patch of hardened dirt.

In the debris-strewn backyard, enclosed by a chain-link fence featuring a "Beware of Dog" sign, a toppled basketball goal was near two bicycles, one of them without a seat. Clothes hung to dry on an indecipherable contraption. The backdoor appeared to have been kicked in, with plenty of clutter visible inside.

A neighbor, 54-year-old Myrtle Drake, said she often saw the children playing in the front yard or sitting on a stoop outside her house, never causing trouble. "They seemed happy," she said.

The case is eerily similar to one last year just north of here in the Mississippi River city of Alton, where police say pregnant Dorothy Dixon died after weeks of torture inflicted by housemates.

Alton police say Dixon had been banished to the basement, where she had a thin rug and mattress. Investigators say the woman, who was six months pregnant, was used for BB target practice, burned with a glue gun, beaten with bats and doused with scalding liquid.

Two adults, three teenagers and a 12-year-old boy were charged with murder and pleaded not guilty, though the status of their cases was not immediately available Tuesday.