Accused in child-abuse case dispute police story

December 3, 2006

By MARY AMES

Frontiersman

PALMER -The children said their adoptive parents, hit them, deprived them of food, denied them education and confined them, but the parents said that wasn't true - they feared the children.

In sworn testimony Tuesday, the woman who pleaded no contest to an assault charge disputed the version of events in police and probation reports.

Sherry Kelley, 37, and her husband, Patrick Kelley, 45, were originally charged in September 2004 with nine felonies and 34 misdemeanor charges after Alaska State Troopers investigated their treatment of five adopted children.

Sherry Kelley pleaded no contest to third-degree assault, a felony, and criminal nonsupport, a misdemeanor, as part of a plea agreement with the state in February. In her second day on the witness stand, the woman refuted the incidents leading to the charges ever happened.

On July 9, a day after three older children were removed from the Kelley's Misty Lake property, troopers returned to look for the 6-year-old girl and 10-year-old boy, according to the police report. Sherry Kelley told officers she hadn't seen the boy all day, but a trooper found him hiding behind a building, the report said. The boy had bruising on his face, significant swelling and small lacerations on his left arm, and walked with a limp, the report said, and the boy was taken to Valley Hospital by ambulance.

Another child told troopers Sherry Kelley hit the boy with a metal pipe after she ordered him to get into the family's minivan, the police report said. But Sherry Kelley repeatedly stated the boy hit her in the face with the pipe, and he told her he hurt his arm when he fell off the greenhouse the day before.

When Rachel Gernat, assistant district attorney, showed Sherry Kelley her own hospital records from Valley Hospital and an Anchorage hospital that showed no facial injuries, Sherry Kelley dismissed the records.

&#8220They also photographed my face,” Sherry Kelley said. &#8220And they don't show that.”

Investigators found a pipe with blood on it in a box, but the box wasn't where the boy told them it was, according to Leonard Wallner, an investigator with troopers. Although the state crime lab confirmed it was blood on the pipe, the lab never returned test results stating whose blood it was, he said. Generally, when lab personnel hear a court case has been settled with a plea agreement, they do no further tests on evidence, he said.

The boy had filled Tiki torches with fuel oil, spilled some oil on his clothes and was burned on his legs and hips when he rolled into a campfire on Feb. 14, 2004, the police report said. By her own admission, Sherry Kelley never took him for medical treatment and the burns had not healed by the time troopers took the boy to the hospital that July. About a month after he was burned, one of the boy's fingers was frostbitten, the police report said. Sherry Kelley also admitted not taking him for medical treatment for the finger, and when he was in the hospital in July, the fingertip had to be amputated, she said from the witness stand.

The boy was incontinent, a condition that aggravated his wounds, but Sherry Kelley said he'd had a physical once and the doctor never mentioned any underlying physical condition. Although the children's medical care was paid through Medicaid, during the time they lived at the Misty Lake property, Sherry Kelley said she didn't fill the boy's prescriptions. Gernat showed Sherry Kelley a prescription for Adderall, which the adoptive mother of five said was for his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Then Gernat showed the woman another prescription with a name she couldn't pronounce and asked what the medication was meant to treat.

&#8220I believe it was for depression,” Sherry Kelley said. &#8220I'm sorry, I can't remember.”

Most of their years together, the family lived in an Anchorage house under a lease-purchase agreement, and camped out during the summer of 2003 on property they bought next to Sherry Kelley's parents on Misty Lake, Sherry Kelley said. In January 2004, the Kelleys moved to the Misty Lake property permanently, after one of the older girls sexually assaulted a 4-year-old girl who lived in the Anchorage home for about a month, according to Sherry Kelley's testimony.

&#8220We hadn't planned on moving out to the Valley then,” Sherry Kelley said. &#8220But it was better to go out ahead of schedule than to stay in the home and cause more harm.”

The Kelleys bought a trailer with an attached shed from a neighbor, and lived in those units on the neighbor's property until they could move them down to their own property, she said. Before the buildings were moved, but after &#8220about May,” some of the boys and Sherry Kelley slept in tents on the Kelley's property, the older girls slept in a cabin they could lock from the inside and the younger girl slept at the grandparent's house, she said.

When the children were removed from the property in July, three of the older children stayed with Sandra Forman, Sherry Kelley's sister in Wasilla. According to testimony Tuesday from Beverly Egan, Sherry Kelley's sister who lived in Soldotna at the time, Forman and another sister, Shayla Turner, encouraged the children to tell them about events that happened at the Misty Lake property for three or four days before any formal interviews with investigators.

Egan said she told her sisters their questioning was inappropriate. Sean Egan, Beverly's husband, testified at Tuesday's hearing that he thought Forman and Turner were coaching the children, and after he said so, the other sisters asked him and his wife to leave Forman's home, he said.

Investigators for the Kelleys' appointed defense attorneys went out to the property in July 2005, and took photos of toys, bicycles, clothes and stacks of food. Those photos contradicted the children's claims in the trooper report they were deprived of food, toys and clean clothes, according to the defense team.

Gernat pointed out discrepancies between photos and videos police took at the scene the year before.

At least one of the older children testified in a closed courtroom for more than an hour Tuesday.

Patrick Kelly, who pleaded no contest to one felony count of first-degree endangering the welfare of a child in February, remained silent in court.

Anchorage Superior Court Judge Michael Wolverton set Jan. 8 and 9 for sentencing the Kelleys in Palmer.

Contact Mary Ames at 352-2284 or mary.ames@frontiersman.com.