A Washington mother was sentenced to 40 years in prison after a jury found her guilty of assaulting her 1-year-old daughter by putting bleach drops in her eyes in a 2011 incident.
Jennifer Mothershead, 31, was convicted of first-degree assault of a child on October 4. Jurors also found aggravating factors that show she exhibited deliberate cruelty to a vulnerable victim, amounting to torture.
Mothershead’s attorney, Jane Pierson, argued for the minimum sentence of 7 years, while prosecutors argued for 50 years, citing the aggravating factors.
The Pierce County Sheriff's Department began investigating the case in May 2011 when Mothershead’s 1-year-old daughter was airlifted to the Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for a head injury.
While the child was being treated for the head injury, hospital staffers noticed that the 1-year-old girl’s previously diagnosed eye condition had worsened, according to court documents.
During an interview, the victim’s mother told authorities her daughter’s eye became infected in March of 2011 after she had been playing in a barn and developed a corneal abrasion. The victim was prescribed antibiotics and eye drops, which were given to her by her mother.
Court document filed by the defense state that Mothershead took her daughter to several follow-up medical visits.
“Typical instructions were to apply ointments, to expect cross-contamination of one eye to the other, a trial use of steroids, and, finally, toward the end, a trial of eye drops,” Pierson said in the documents.
However, Mothershead told police that her daughter’s eye had had been swollen shut for weeks and that she had been sleeping for 20-22 hours a day due to the discomfort, according to the probable cause statement. She said that her daughter had to be “swaddled” when the eye drops and antibiotics were administered due to the pain.
Investigators say they became suspicious when a hospital staffer told police that upon opening the child’s medication a “noxious odor filled the room,” causing burning eyes and mild nausea for staff, court documents state.
During the investigation, a detective said when she opened the container of eye drops, a strong chemical odor emanated from the bottle. A short time later, the detective said her skin turned red and she experienced a burning sensation on a portion of her skin that had been exposed.
Authorities then sent the eye drops to a forensic chemistry lab for analysis, and scientists determined the drops contained bleach, according to the probable cause statement.
“The damage to the victim’s eye was consistent with repeated exposure to bleach,” the Pierce County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office said in a press release.
The 1-year-old girl sustained permanent vision loss in her right eye, but a doctor said her condition immediately improved when she was removed from her mother’s care.
“It would take a significant amount of bleach, consistently applied, to cause the damage,” a doctor told police, according to court documents.
Mothershead was arrested in April 2012. She pleaded not guilty at her arraignment.
HLN was unable to reach Pierson for a comment Thursday. However, in court documents, Pierson stated, “Ms. Mothershead loves both of her daughters with every fiber of her being. She has not, nor would she ever do anything to intentionally harm either of her children.”
The victim, now 3, lives with her father.
Mothershead is currently serving her sentence at the Washington Corrections Center for Women. A judge required her to undergo a mandatory mental-health evaluation, and to have no contact with the victim for life.
“I know this is the time the court wants to hear me admit what I have done, but I cannot do that here,” Mothershead said at sentencing, the News Tribune reported. “I never put anything in (her) eyes that the doctor did not prescribe.”
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