How Could You? Hall of Shame-Lillian and Briana Manning case UPDATED

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 Sacramento, California, kinship adoptive mother (great aunt) Lillian  Kate Manning-Horvath aka Rachel Cornist, 72, was sentenced on July 8, 2011 to “32 years and 8 months consecutive to two indeterminate life terms in prison for the systematic and sadistic torture of her adopted daughters, Lilly and Briana.

Deputy District Attorney Thienvu Ho stated, “Thanks to the tremendous courage of Lilly and Briana, and the tireless efforts of Sacramento sheriff’s detectives and district attorney investigators, justice was served in this case. With today’s sentencing, the defendant will never be free again.”

Sacramento County District Attorney News release July 8, 2011

Joseph, 54, was convicted in September 2009.

According to Lillian Manning’s abuser gets life in prison, plus 36 years [Sacramento Bee 7/18/11], “The judge ordered that the first six years of Manning-Horvath’s term be spent in a state mental hospital. “Frankly, no sentence is adequate to right the wrong done to Lillian” and her older sister, Briana, who also addressed the court, Brown said. The judge added another 32 years and eight months to Manning-Horvath’s sentence for additional convictions on charges such as assault, child endangerment and false imprisonment. Manning-Horvath’s husband, Joseph Horvath, 54, was convicted by a jury in September 2009 and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The younger Lillian Manning and her siblings were placed in the custody of Lillian Manning-Horvath, her great aunt, sometime in the 1990s. According to Manning-Horvath’s probation report, she married Joseph Horvath in 2001 and it was then that the abuse of the now-19-year-old Lillian began.

It included locking her in a closet, burning her with boiling water, pulling her fingers and toes with pliers, kicking her in the mouth with a steel-toed boot and body-slamming her and breaking her arm, the probation report said. It was Lillian Manning’s escape from her parents’ house in November 2007 that led to the couple’s arrest. Although Briana Manning did not talk to probation officials, she read a statement in court today in which she said she also had been beaten with “two-by-fours, pots and pans, high-heel shoes” and hammers by Lillian Manning-Horvath. “I don’t know what you deserve because it’s not my place to tell you what you deserve,” Briana Manning said in court. “All I can say is what goes around comes back around.”

Lawsuit

According to Sacramento’s ‘girl with a hundred scars’ files claim for damages [Sacramento Bee 12/19/11 by Marjorie Lundstrom], “Last week, lawyers for Manning filed a claim for damages against Sacramento County’s Child Protective Services and the Sacramento City Unified School District.

The claim, a precursor to any lawsuit, alleges child welfare workers and school employees failed to protect her from the violent household into which she was adopted.”Lilly and her siblings were kept in a virtual prisoner-of-war camp where they were repeatedly, systematically and sadistically beaten and tortured by their adoptive mother, Lillian Manning-Horvath, and her husband, Joseph Horvath,” according to the claim.

The legal matter has opened the curtain on Lilly Manning’s past, and how she and her four siblings wound up in their great-aunt’s care, only to endure savage beatings, tongue-lashings and death threats.Confidential records recently released by the county reveal how one CPS social worker aggressively promoted the Manning children’s adoption in the 1990s. The worker lavished praise on Lillian Manning-Horvath, while dismissing alarms raised by others, according to CPS and Juvenile Court documents.

The claim also singles out six workers associated with the Sacramento City Unified School District for allegedly failing to report their own suspicions of abuse, as required by law. The workers include a teacher, a school nurse, a Head Start coordinator, a vice principal, an assistant principal and an attendance clerk.”

“”The failure of all these mandated reporters to file (abuse) reports – it just drives me nuts,” said Sacramento attorney Joseph C. George, who is representing Lilly Manning.Yet again, timing and judgment will play a critical role in the case – for both Lilly Manning and for the government entities she seeks to sue.In California, government is generally immune from civil liability, with exceptions. Timeliness also plays a key role, because a claim involving death or injury must be brought within six months of the alleged harm.Manning was 15 when she escaped in October 2007 from a locked closet in the home of her adoptive mother.The teenager, who suffered the bulk of the abuse, was stabbed, burned and beaten with 2-by-4s, broomsticks, shoes, a hammer and a swinging padlock. After she fled, the secrets tumbled out as doctors discovered a young body ravaged with more than 100 scars and injuries.”

“Now, a Superior Court judge may ultimately decide if Manning, who turns 20 in January, can pursue civil damages. At issue: Does her claim have merit? And even if the government agrees that it does, was it filed in time?”

“Manning’s attorneys also have filed a claim on behalf of her younger brother, Kenyata Manning. George, a lawyer and psychologist who has worked with numerous child-abuse victims, said the core of the Lilly Manning case is the number of public workers who suspected abuse but did not formally report it.In her claim, attorneys contend that the young woman suffers from Stockholm syndrome and was unable to recognize that she was a victim – or take any legal action – until her adoptive mother was sentenced this year.

The claim defines Stockholm syndrome as a “psychiatric disease and psychological phenomenon where hostages express empathy and have positive feelings toward their captors.””Lilly’s adoptive mother … was viewed as the person who was in control of her basic needs for survival and for her life itself,” according to the claim. “In short, Lillian Manning-Horvath was viewed by Lilly as giving Lilly life simply by not killing her.”

“Confidential Juvenile Court documents obtained earlier this year by The Bee revealed that four different agencies visited the family at least 11 times on reports of suspected abuse or neglect in a five-year period, but did not move to protect Manning or her siblings. Numerous attempts by the children to get help went unrecognized or unheeded.The newly released CPS records show how the agency – and one social worker in particular – ramrodded the adoption, despite a series of red flags.The five children were taken into protective custody in February 1994 after being found “abandoned by their mother … in a filthy crack house” littered with feces, used condoms, crack pipes and an open 40-ounce beer bottle, according to a CPS report to the Juvenile Court.CPS placed Lilly Manning and her two brothers “on a trial basis” with their great-aunt a month later, and the two older sisters joined them seven months after that. At the time, Manning’s home in North Highlands was found by CPS to be “appropriate for placement.”Lillian Manning renamed all five children and eventually proceeded with adoption after the CPS caseworker filed numerous glowing reports about the home.In one confidential court document, the woman who later smashed her adoptive daughter’s fingers with a hammer and burned her with boiling water and a curling iron was described as “capable, experienced and energetic.”

“The second social worker, acting on behalf of the children’s court-appointed attorneys, said one child had informed her that the caregiver was using corporal punishment. And she expressed concern that Lillian Manning was requiring the children to “sleep on the living room floor so she could monitor them.”

“The minors’ caretaker, Ms. Manning, has displayed a lack of insight regarding the special needs of these minors,” according to the social worker’s 1996 declaration to the court.”Ms. Manning becomes defensive when concerns are raised, and has made statements about wanting to give the minors back to the Dept. because it is too much hassle now.”

The social worker complained that her concerns “went unheard or were discounted” by CPS. The worker requested and got a mediation with the parties, but documents show there was little resolution – and the adoption went forward.Alarms go unansweredHealth workers, too, raised alarms about the home.

In 1997, Lilly Manning’s 6-year-old sister was examined at the UC Davis Medical Center, where a nurse identified injuries consistent with battered child syndrome, medical records show.A physician who viewed the semi-circular “closed loop” injuries on the girl’s body said they were “classical for ones inflicted by an electrical cord,” according to the doctor’s notes.The physician did not believe the story that the girl had been struck with a coat hanger by her older sister, saying the injuries were not consistent with that scenario.

However, the CPS worker continued to champion the adoption and told the court the abuse allegations were unsubstantiated. The social worker said she “feels strongly that this (adoption) plan is in the children’s best interest.”Documents show that the social worker had been told a week earlier about previous abuse in the household.

A counselor seeing the family told the CPS worker in a June 1997 letter that Lillian Manning “does not hit any of the children and has not done so since 1994 when she was using a plastic spoon, on occasion, to discipline the children.”

In the newly filed government claim, Lilly Manning’s attorney cited the spoon beating as one in a series of allegations that fell on deaf ears.The claim also singles out six workers associated with the Sacramento City Unified School District.As reported earlier in The Bee, the school workers are described in documents as having varying degrees of concern and suspicion about the Manning home. At one point, the school nurse and a Head Start coordinator scheduled a home visit to follow up on Lilly Manning’s numerous scratches but left the home without seeing her. Neither filed a child abuse report, according to the claim.  ”

Update: Joseph Horvath’s appeal of his conviction was denied.

“For six years, Defendant Joseph Robert Horvath and his wife tortured, beat and maimed their adopted daughter, starting when she was nine and ending when she was fifteen. The wife thought her husband was sexually molesting the daughter, so she beat the girl until she confirmed this was so. Then the husband would take over and beat the girl for such an accusation, which was false.”

“The abuse ended when the daughter ran away on Halloween evening in 2007 and called a teen safe house, which picked her up at a nearby McDonald’s. She was then taken to an emergency room.

The injuries, a doctor determined, were at various stages of healing and were to the daughter’s lips, ears, head, teeth, mouth and arms.

The prosecutor in the Superior Court of Sacramento County charged Horvath with three counts of aggravated mayhem (Penal Code § 205), as well as other charges. This requires the specific intent to cause a maiming injury under circumstances of extreme indifference to the physical and psychological well-being of another person. Horvath was convicted of torture, aggravated mayhem, criminal threats, assault with a deadly weapon and false imprisonment. He was sentenced to three life terms.

Horvath appealed the conviction, arguing that the evidence only showed he attacked indiscriminately,” rather than with the intent to maim. [Seriously?]

The Third Appellate District, in People v. Joseph Robert Horvath (2012 DJDAR 3142),disagreed with Horvath, holding that a defendant’s specific intent to maim a body part could be inferred from the repeated, systematic abuse to a body part over time.”

“The Court seemed horrified by the violence inflicted to the young lady over the six year time period. Witnesses testified to seeing dried blood from the daughter splattered on walls, a blood stained hammer, a bloody two by four, both which Horvath used to beat his adopted daughter, bloody clothes, hair pulled out, a broken left arm, four missing teeth, descriptions of Horvath ‘body slamming” the girl to a concrete floor and then kicking her in the ribs and rearend with his steel-toed boots, and locking her in a closet, which was nailed shut. In the years that the young woman was abused, she was locked in the closet fifty to one-hundred times.

The Court also found fault with Horvath’s argument that an “indiscriminate attack” is insufficient to prove specific intent. Citing two California Supreme Court cases,was found lacking to support a mayhem conviction, the Court then methodically distinguished each case from Horvath’s conduct, mostly pointing out that Horvath’s conduct went on day after day as compared to Anderson and Sears, who inflicted injuries in just one fit of anger in one day.

The Court also cited to conviction for mayhem was upheld when Assad engaged in three beatings over two days.

Analogizing Assad to even three beatings in Horvath would support a conviction for mayhem,the Court pointed out. The Court was particularly troubled by the severe injuries to them daughter’s lips and ears, which a doctor opined were caused by repeated abuse over time, as well as the broken arm injuries caused by blows from a hammer. The Court found Horvath’s failure to take his daughter to the hospital probative of his general intent to maim.

Accordingly, Horvath’s appeal was denied and the convictions were sustained.”

Systematic Child Abuse Over Time Supports Aggravated Mayhem Conviction
[JD Supra 3/20/12 by Greg Hill]

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