A 70-year-old woman in the US state of Missouri has received a suspended sentence for swapping her foster daughter for an exotic animal, reports infohub.kz.
A Lincoln County judge sentenced Brenda Deutsch to seven years in prison but immediately replaced the sentence with three years of probation. The former guardian was found guilty of sending her 17-year-old ward to live with acquaintances in Texas in unsanitary conditions. In exchange for the teenager, the woman received a monkey.
According to law enforcement, the girl was kept in a Texas home with wild animals and forced to care for them. School security and social services intervened after the child had been absent from school for a long time. Deutsch herself had raised more than two hundred children over her lifetime, but the judge revoked her guardian license and called her actions, to put it mildly, unacceptable.
As part of a plea deal, additional charges of child abuse were dropped. The defendant's biological daughter admitted she was shocked by the leniency of the sentence and believes the social protection system has completely failed. The foster daughter is now under the care of Texas social services and is trying to return to a normal life.