CALHOUN, Ga. — A Georgia woman was sentenced to 200 years in prison, plus 200 years probation, for subjecting her children to horrendous living conditions and allowing her husband to beat and torture them.
The case emerged in Calhoun, Georgia in Feb. 2020, and the Cherokee County District Attorney's Office announced the sentencing for 37-year-old Stephanie Danielle Davis on Friday.
Her husband, 43-year-old Christopher Matthew Davis, is the stepfather of the children. He received two life sentences plus 841 years in prison after being found guilty to 47 chares in December. The mother pleaded guilty in November to 42 charges.
According to the Cherokee DA's Office, the abuse committed against the nine children, ranging in age from 3-17, by the stepfather included them being "locked in an unheated closet with no bathroom, strangled until they passed out, forced to sit on a fire ant pile and burned with items such as sparklers and hot oil."
Officers found the children were given little food and water on purpose - being forced to eat spoiled food - and restricted to when they could use the bathroom. They were living without adequate clothing, lacking beds, blankets and pillows. They were also locked upstairs when the mother and stepfather were away.
The situation was uncovered when one of the children, a teen boy, escaped in Feb. 2020 and told the Calhoun Police Department the stepfather "slapped and punched him, hit him with a stick, strangled him, burned him with hot oil, locked him in a closet and beat him with a belt and a wooden cane."
Police said at that time the boy had "visible injuries all over his head and body" as well as a broken eardrum.
Early in 2019, counselors in the Gordon County school system reported that they suspected the children were being abused to the Georgia Division of Family & Children Services (DFCS), at which point the mother pulled them out of public school. It wasn't clear how far DFCS pursued the case.
Katie Gropper, a prosecutor in the DA's Office, said the mother originally tried to claim she was also a "helpless victim" in the case, but that "the evidence demonstrated her extensive involvement."
"She not only held the children down while they were beaten and burned by her husband Christopher Davis, but also crafted cover stories for the children to tell their teachers and DFCS if they were ever asked about their injuries," Gropper said. "Her efforts to influence and manipulate the children to recant their allegations continued even after her arrest.”
At the sentencing hearing, according to the DA's Office, the woman's children "testified that the physical wounds and suffering they experienced were painful, but the betrayal of their own mother left deeper wounds that will take much longer to heal."
."Today, the children are in stable and loving foster homes and have demonstrated incredible resilience,” said Cherokee County District Attorney Shannon Wallace. “These children are now able to live freely, without fear, and to rise above this trauma.”
