A foster mother in Missouri is avoiding a seven-year prison sentence after being accused of trading a teenage girl for a monkey.
Videos by Wide Open Country
The Judge Called the Act Reprehensible
As reported by the New York Post, Judge Thomas Frawley in Lincoln County, Missouri, condemned the actions of 70-year-old Brenda Deutsch. He then apologized to Deutsch's alleged victim for a foster care system that he said failed them.
Despite this, Frawley suspended Deutsch's sentence for child endangerment. He placed her on three years of probation and revoked her foster care license. He then criticized the state of Missouri for allowing Deutsch to keep it.
Deutsch will remain free if she complies with the terms of the revised sentence. Brina Johnson, Deutsch's biological daughter, testified about her mother's alleged abuse and said she was stunned by the outcome.
"I'm kinda lost for words because this is not the end we wished for," she told reporters.
Johnson said a teenager in the courtroom was the foster child believed to have been traded for a monkey.
"I have the whole conversation on my phone, which I turned over to the detectives," Johnson said. "That's what she did. She had at least seven monkeys. That's just her thing. But she wasn't any nicer to those monkeys than she was to a child."
The Foster Mom Allegedly Traded the Child for a Monkey
Deutsch was arrested in April after authorities looked into allegations that a foster child under her care was sent to Texas to stay in a home Deutsch testified in court she knew nothing about.
Court documents show that Deutsch sought permission to take the foster child, who is now 17, to visit a friend in Texas. Five days later, an anonymous caller contacted the Missouri Department of Social Services Children's Division and said Deutsch was allegedly physically and mentally abusing the child.
Investigators then learned that the girl had been allegedly traded for an exotic animal and was living in Texas.
The foster child told authorities that Deutsch told her friend in Texas she could keep her. Documents said Deutsch added she would also be "keeping the check."
The girl had been left in an unsanitary home filled with exotic animals, according to a witness. She was eventually taken in by child protective services in Texas.
Deutsch has reportedly fostered more than 200 children. Johnson said the foster system failed the children in her mother's care.
She said, "It was good to know somebody knows from the other side of the street that this shouldn't have happened."
