GUILTY CA - Christopher Cejas, 12, beaten to death, Sacramento, 21 Aug 2002

cathieq said:

A convicted child molester was sentenced Friday in Sacramento Superior Court to 75 years and 8 months to life in prison for starving and beating to death his 12-year-old son.



"It is so fundamental to human nature to love your own children," said Judge Gary S. Mullen in a voice cracking with emotion.

"Even the most harden criminals in our prisons can't imagine how a father can to this," the judge told Andrew Anthony Cejas...

...Alex Chirino, 39, who with her parents raised the boy most of his life in North Carolina, had let the father "bond" with his son for what was initially to be a a few weeks. After receiving news of the murder, she was institutionalized and hasn't been able to talk about her son since...
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14275922p-15085435c.html

Sometimes it is all I can do to restrain myself...I am glad the father got a tough sentence - Still, it just isn't tough enough.

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Trial evidence showed the boy, whom his father ridiculed for being overweight, was kept from eating by being handcuffed to doorknobs and an entryway post in their Watt Avenue apartment. He was fed a tablespoon of electrolyte-containing replacement fluid a day.

When he was found Aug. 21, 2002, he had more than 100 bruises with 74 major injuries, including a severed liver, torn kidney and bleeding in the brain...

The 33-year-old stepmother, Kathryn Elizabeth Potter, who was sentenced on April 7, 2006, to 15 years to life, stood by and watched as the elder Cejas carried out the relentless whippings because she hated and was disgusted by the boy, court records show.

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