By Anna Zheng
SACRAMENTO, CA – Adam Martinez appeared in Sacramento County Superior Court Thursday for a pretrial release request over two felony counts of child abuse that accrued in March—he is alleged to have endangered the life and health of a child and causing corporal punishment or injury to a child.
Martinez’s attorney asked for the defendant to be released on pretrial, without bail, explaining Martinez’s history, including that “Martinez is 20 years old, no prior criminal history. At the time he turned himself in voluntarily for this offense. He was following CPS directives while he completed 15 parenting sessions. He was also employed as a manager at McDonald’s.
“He agrees to any order that the court would impose, including no contact with the minor child. I would like to ask for him to be released,” Martinez’s attorney requested.
Deputy District Attorney Berkeley Hatfield objected, and then outlined the prosecution case to Commissioner Ken Brody—it was enough for Brody to refuse to release Martinez.
“This case stems around an eight-month-old little girl, where the mother woke up in the middle of the night to find the child’s body covered in…bruising. Officers described the bruising as major bruising to the neck, arms, and legs,” Hatfield explained.
When the child arrived at the hospital, the doctors informed the mother that “there was no way these bruises could have come from another child or from a fall.”
According to the doctor’s report, they “found numerous bruises of different sizes and different ages, indicating that this violence to the eight-month old had been occurring over a long period of time.”
“The infant had five oblong shaped bite marks and bruises on her back,” Hatfield added.
Hatfield then brought up a pretext call, where the defendant had “admitted that he pinched the child and he also dissuaded the mother from seeking treatment for the child and asked her to not cooperate with CPS [Child Protective Services], or at least try to minimize his involvement.”
Ultimately, Commissioner Brody denied the request for pretrial release based upon “the seriousness of the offense, the potential danger to this or any child, and the defendant’s alleged conduct.”
Commissioner Brody, however, explained that “there obviously needs to be a further exploration of the facts, probably from the defense side as well, to see if any additional release motion should be heard. At this time I am going to deny it, the bail will remain as set and we can put the matter over.”
Martinez’s next court date is set for July 13 for the defendant’s bail motion.
I can’t help wondering, how many instances there have been wherein immense long-term suffering by children of dysfunctional rearing might have been prevented had the parent(s) received, as high school students, some crucial child development science education by way of mandatory curriculum? After all, dysfunctional and/or abusive parents, for example, may not have had the chance to be anything else due to their lack of such education and their own dysfunctional/abusive rearing as children.
Regardless, a psychologically and emotionally sound, as well as a physically healthy, future needs to be every child’s right, especially considering the very troubled world into which they never asked to enter.
Trauma from unchecked toxic abuse typically results in a helpless child’s brain improperly developing. If allowed to continue for a prolonged period, it can act as a starting point into a life in which the brain uncontrollably releases potentially damaging levels of inflammation-promoting stress hormones and chemicals, even in non-stressful daily routines. It has been described as a discomforting anticipation of ‘the other shoe dropping’ and simultaneously being scared of how badly you will deal with the upsetting event, which usually never transpires. It can make every day an emotional/psychological ordeal, unless the mental turmoil is treated with some form of medicating, either prescribed or illicit. The pain — which unlike an open physical disability or condition, such as paralysis, a missing limb or eye — is very formidable yet invisibly confined to inside one’s head, solitarily suffered.