How Could You? Hall of Shame-Kairissa XingJing Mark UPDATED-Child Death
This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.
From Mount Juliet, Tennessee, the trial is underway for international adoptive parent and pediatrician Dr. Deborah Wen-Yee Mark in the July 2, 2010 death of her 4-year-old developmentally delayed, Chinese adopted daughter, Kairissa XingJing Mark. Kairissa had only been in her “forever home” for less than 3 months and died in the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee after a blunt force injury that occurred on July 1, 2010.
Deborah has been charged with 7 felonies: first degree murder, perpetration of aggravated child abuse, aggravated child abuse and four counts of child abuse.
Steven, a stay-at-home dad, has been charged with 8 felonies: aggravated child abuse and neglect, criminal responsibility for aggravated child abuse, aggravated assault by failure to protect, four counts of child abuse, and accessory after the fact.Steven’s trial is expected to begin in early 2012.
Both were released on bond on July 12, 2010. Deborah’s bond was $150,000. Steven’s bond was $100,000.
Deborah lost her license to practice on July 20, 2010. See the letter from the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners here.
Bethany Christian Services is the placing agency.
Kairissa’s Struggles
The Tennessean reports: “Kairissa Mark died in the summer of 2010, police say, after her mother’s actions led to serious head injury. The girl died in the hospital two days after the incident, her injuries ruled acute blunt force trauma by the state medical examiner.
According to Mark’s statements to investigators and the defense’s opening statement, Kairissa was in poor health from the beginning and prone to erratic behavior when she was adopted in March 2010.
Her left leg was weaker than her right, and she weighed only 21 pounds when she was adopted.
She was difficult to feed, according to statements, and couldn’t speak English, only able to talk with her mother in Mandarin. Around mid-June, Kairissa began holding her breath out of frustration.”
As the child’s behavior worsened, so too did her mother’s control, according to her statements.
Mark told investigators that as far back as April of that year, she had become frustrated enough with the child’s behavior that she pinched her nipples or thighs on a daily basis. Later, Mark told investigators, she hit Kairissa’s hands so hard that they bruised. In other incidents, she told investigators that she struck the child with a stick her older sister used for karate practice and later an icepack.”
The Night of Kairissa’s Final Blunt Force Trauma
The Tennessean reports: “According to her statements, on the night of the incident, Mark arrived home from karate with her eldest daughter. When she awoke Kairissa, the child stood up from the infant mattress on the floor of the guest bedroom and fell, striking her head against a sleigh bed.
The child stood up but fell again at the stairs. According to her statement, Mark picked her up, frustrated, took her back to her room and flung her down on the mattress. The girl struck her head on a wall on the way down and was unresponsive.
Mark told investigators that she put the girl on her side and went downstairs. She checked on the child again hours later, still unresponsive. In the morning, the girl was still unresponsive around 7 a.m. Steven Mark called 911 around 9:30 a.m. [This medical neglect is exactly what happened with Russian adoptee Nathaniel Craver]
In opening statements, Mark’s defense attorney, Jack Lowry Sr., said his client’s daughter had always been in poor health and pointed out that Steven Mark was the primary caregiver. Deborah Mark had been away from Kairissa most of the day.
“This is not a woman who would hurt a child,” he said. “She is here because she went upstairs to give this child some food.”
In the 2010 recording, the mother said she and her husband wondered if the girl would have been better off in China but said, “I in no shape or form would have wanted to kill Kairissa.”
Steven Mark is charged with four counts of aggravated child abuse and four counts of child abuse. His trial date has not been set.
The couple has an 8-year-old [biological daughter, Kiersten who initially was taken into foster care and said to have witnessed some of the abuse], now in an uncle’s custody.”
Day One Testimony
News Channel 5reports: “Testimony started Tuesday morning in the trial for Dr. Deborah Mark, who faces first degree homicide charges in the death of her adopted daughter Kairissa Mark.
She Blames Her Husband!
News Channel 5 reports:”Defense attorneys for a Mt. Juliet pediatrician have argued that the injuries responsible for the death of a 4-year-old girl adopted from China could have been inflicted the girl’s adoptive father.
Friends Were Concerned
The Tennessean reports: “Weeks before Kairissa Mark died, two family friends suspected the mother was abusing the 4-year-old girl and they planned to intervene, but they never did.”
“At some point, the father sought help from the adoption agency and just days before the girl died a post-adoption counselor contacted the family to schedule an appointment with the family.
Rebecca Allen told jurors Wednesday that her daughter had frequent play dates with the Marks’ older daughter. She testified that she had seen bruises on Kairissa’s arms and witnessed what she believed to be abusive behavior by Deborah Wen-Yee Mark against Kairissa.
When she saw news reports that a Mt. Juliet girl had been taken to a Nashville hospital with injuries, she feared the worst.
“My heart sank. I just knew it was Kairissa,’’ Allen testified.”
“I was worried that Kairissa should not go home with the Marks, but before I could call someone I got the news that she had died.’’
Another mother, Christine Kowall, had met Deborah Wen-Yee Mark where their children attended karate in Mt. Juliet. She started documenting bruises she had seen, and by late June resolved to contact police after she returned from a July 4 vacation. Kairissa died July 2, 2010.”
Steven
Steven was the primary caregiver/stay-at-home dad and was not in the courtroom Tuesday or Wednesday [November 29 or 30, 2011].
“Lowery said that in his interview with detectives, Steven Mark admitted to punishing the girl by putting her in a box in the garage with the lights out and swinging her in the air to scare her.
Lowery said that in a June 30 phone call to the adoption agency, Steven Mark said: “Why did you send this demon child to me?’’
The Nashville director for Bethany Christian Services, which placed Kairissa with the Marks, said during testimony that a counselor emailed the Marks to set up a meeting but never got a response.
In the agency’s first and only home visit, two weeks after the Marks brought Kairissa home, the family was bonding well, director Tammy Bass said.
Bass testified that Kairissa was a special needs child, having been listed as “mentally retarded” by the orphanage in China and having had two surgeries before adoption.”
Thursday December 1 Trial
Journalist Josh DeVine is tweeting from the courtroom. The doctor from Vanderbilt is testifying. Some points he shares:
- Kairissa was comatose and intubated when she arrived at the hospital
- Kairissa had 13 fractures in her arm, hand and ribs
- Doctor testifies that injuries are consistent with a fall from 2 to 3 stories not a small fall.
- Doctor quote “This child was tortured and then killed.”
Trial Underway For Doctor Accused In Daughter’s Death
[News Channel 5 11/29/11]
Homicide Trial Continues For Mt. Juliet Doctor
[News Channel 5 11/30/11]
Wilson County mom facing murder charge says she flung daughter
[The Tennessean 11/30/11 by Matt Anderson]
Family friends tell of concern before adopted Wilson girl died
[The Tennessean 12/1/11 by Matt Anderson]
Update: “Deborah Wen-Yee Mark is an unhappy woman driven by a strict Chinese culture that commands her to please authority figures, making her “highly susceptible” to falsely confessing to interrogators, according to a psychologist who testified on her behalf Thursday. [Oh please! Her culture MADE her lie?]
But Dr. James Walker, a forensic neuropsychologist, declined to give an opinion on whether that is indeed what she did in the summer of 2010 when she told Wilson County investigators that she flung her 4-year-old daughter out of frustration.
Two doctors testified Thursday that the girl, Kairissa Mark, died of a traumatic brain injury, likely caused by the impact of her head hitting the wall.
Thursday was the third day of testimony in the first-degree murder trial of Deborah Wen-Yee Mark, 40, a former Mt. Juliet pediatrician who adopted Kairissa from an orphanage in China about five months before the girl died. The mother also is charged with four counts of aggravated child abuse and four counts of child abuse.
Her husband, Steven Mark, is charged with four counts of child abuse and four counts of aggravated child abuse. He pleaded the 5th Amendment when called to the witness stand Thursday by the defense and would not answer any questions. His trial date has not yet been set.
Defense lawyers have worked to show jurors that it was Steven Mark who was the girl’s primary caregiver, and that he told investigators that he would swing Kairissa in the air to scare her and put in her in a box in the dark garage to punish her.
Injuries detailed
A Vanderbilt pediatrician testified that he had no doubt that Kairissa Mark had been “tortured’’ by an adult in the months before her July 2, 2010, death.
Dr. Paul Hain said Kairissa was suffering from more than a dozen broken bones, all at various stages of healing at the time of her death.
“This was not an ‘I-slipped-and-bumped-my-head-kind-of-injury,’ ” Hain testified. “There are no explanations for these multiple bruises, broken bones in the teens – all at different stages of healing.
“This child was deliberately injured by someone with the strength of an adult. This child was tortured over a long period of time and then killed.”
Testimony in Wilson child death case addresses culture, emotion
[The Tennessean 12/2/11 by Erin Quinn]
“The prosecution’s last witness Thursday was the medical examiner who told jurors that 4-year-old Kairissa Mark died from a severe head injury.
Day Three Of Homicide Trial For Mt. Juliet Doctor
[News Channel 5 12/2/11]
Update 2: Deborah gets life in prison! But there is still one more hurdle for total justice– her husband Steven. His trial is not until the new year. He was a stay-at-home dad. Some of the 13 broken bones were old wounds. He is facing 8 felonies. Let’s hope that he ALSO receives justice.
“A former Mt. Juliet pediatrician accused of killing her newly adopted 4-year-old daughter was sentenced to life in prison after a jury Friday found her guilty of first-degree murder and abuse charges.
Deborah Wen-Yee Mark, 40, slowly shrunk in her seat as the jury foreman read the verdict from each charge. First-degree murder? Guilty. Four counts of aggravated child abuse? Guilty. Child Abuse? Guilty.
With each charge, she sank lower until her head was resting on the table where she sat and her shoulders heaved with silent sobs. Courtroom deputies had to help her stand and walk out of the room after she was given an automatic life sentence in prison for the first-degree murder conviction. She’ll be sentenced separately on the other charges at a later date.”
““For 83 days, (Kairissa) was bruised, she was battered, she was broken, she was scarred,” Swink said in his closing arguments. “And in the end … her tiny, 21-pound body was flung into this wall by the defendant.”
A projector flashed an autopsy photo on the courtroom wall: a heartbreakingly tiny girl, one eye blackened, bruised, swollen.
The little girl died from brain injuries suffered the night of June 30, 2010. Prosecutors say Mark tossed the little girl into a wall and left her, unresponsive and bleeding, on a mattress all night long. Mark’s attorneys insist her husband, Steven Mark, struck the fatal blow, earlier in the day when he was alone with the little girl.
The head injury killed Kairissa two days after she was admitted to the hospital. But an autopsy found she had suffered far more trauma during her time with the Marks. Thirteen broken bones. Scars and bruises on her nipples and inner thighs.
Deborah Mark told investigators that, frustrated by the child’s behavior, she had hit Kairissa with sticks, shaken her, pinched and twisted her nipples and thighs, and finally flung her into her bedroom wall.”
““It wasn’t an accident. She was frustrated, and she took her frustrations out on this little girl,” Swink said.
Defense suggests husband responsible
Lowery invited the former pediatrician — a short, slim woman — to walk to the front of the courtroom and show the jury her hands.
“Look at her weight and her height. Look at her fingers and her hands … ask yourself if you believe she could throw a child against the wall” with force comparable to a drop from a second-story window, he said. He pointed to Mark’s husband as a likelier suspect.
“Ask yourself if she herself may be the victim of abuse and domination by her husband,” he said.
Testimony revealed Kairissa was a special-needs child who weighed barely 20 pounds and suffered from weakened legs and possible mental and developmental delays. She would act out
Deborah Mark’s defense team called more than a half-dozen character witnesses . All testified that she was a kind, compassionate doctor to other people’s children. None of the witnesses had ever met Kairissa.
Swink told the jury that when Kairissa came to the Mark family, she needed what every child needs: food, shelter, clothing and, most of all, love.
“She doesn’t need those things anymore,” he said. “What little Kairissa needs is the one thing you, the jury, can give to her, and that is justice.”
Prosecutors now will turn their attention to Steven Mark, who still faces four counts of aggravated child abuse and four more of child abuse. Swink said he doesn’t expect to try the case until next year.”
Adoptive mother gets life in prison
[The Tennessean 12/3/11 by Jennifer Brooks and Brian Haas]
For all the background, see Pound Pup Legacy Files here.
REFORM Puzzle Pieces
Bethany needs to improve their homestudy vetting as two children in Tennessee have died that they have placed.
Update 3: Steven Mark pled guilty to “to two counts of facilitation of aggravated child abuse, one count of aggravated assault by failure to protect and one count of child abuse of a child under 8 years old.” Initially he had “eight charges including four counts of child abuse, one count of aggravated child abuse, criminal responsibility for aggravated child abuse and accessory after the fact.”
“Steven Mark will be eligible for parole after he serves 30 percent of his sentence, which is just over 10 years.”
“Doctors also found 13 broken bones, missing teeth and scars and bruises on Kairissa Mark’s nipples and inner thighs from an ongoing pattern of abuse, according to prosecutors.”
“During interviews with police, Steven Mark admitted he and his wife pried open the young girl’s mouth with an object and knocked two teeth out. Mark also told detectives at some point he placed a heating pad on the child’s thighs as a form of punishment for not eating, which left marks.”
“The Marks have another child who is living with family out of state after the couple relinquished custody soon after charges were filed, Poindexter said.”
[The Tennessean 9/18/12 by Andy Humbles]
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