How Could You? Hall of Shame-Samantha Tomasini

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 Salinas, California, Samantha Tomasini, who pled no contest to child endangerment in a case involving the alleged sale of her baby outside Walmart for $25 to two women in June 2010, has asked for a jail term. She received four years probation and was placed in a rehab program, but she feels that she will dry out better in prison.

The Monterey Herald says “Judge Pamela Butler handed down a four-year prison sentence, agreeing with Tomasini that her drug addiction and emotional issues make it hard for her to stick with court-ordered treatment programs. Tomasini faced up to six years in prison, a term requested by prosecutor Rolando Mazariegos.

Butler described Tomasini as “someone trying to do the right thing, and it does not come easy to you.”

She commended Tomasini’s “self-awareness” and sacrifice in giving up her daughter to another family to raise.

Tomasini previously admitted to child endangerment charges after police found the couple’s daughter living in squalor in their Salinas apartment.

Tomasini’s ex-boyfriend, Patrick Fousek, was found guilty of felony child endangerment and is serving a six-year prison sentence.

The baby-selling allegation, which made national headlines, was never proven.

Defense attorneys said Fousek, 39 at the time, was joking when he offered to sell the child to two Salinas women for $25 in June 2010.”

“Tomasini admitted that although she kicked her methamphetamine habit, she used heroin while on probation.

Without being specific, Butler said Tomasini suffers from “other diagnoses,” and added, “I think you self-medicate with drugs.”

Butler and Liner said Tomasini, who was 20 at the time of her arrest, had been under the sway of Fousek.

Liner said Tomasini was emotionally a “pre-teen” who was “finally out of the clutches of that relationship.”

Before her sentence was handed down, Tomasini said, “I apologize to my daughter for everything, and for being so weak. I chose her father over her and I am ashamed of that.”

When she testified in Fousek’s trial, Tomasini shouldered much of the blame for the child’s mistreatment, saying Fousek had to “pick up my slack” after she resumed her drug habit when the baby was 7 months old.

Prosecutors said Fousek put the child at grave risk when he failed to stop Tomasini from breast-feeding the child while high on methamphetamine.

Although later blood tests did not find traces of the drug in the girl, at Fousek’s sentencing Butler told him the effects of the drug exposure “will not be fully known until she starts missing milestones.”

Tomasini, who has never been to state prison, indicated she hoped the prison time would help her clean up and “just move on.”

With good behavior and counting time already served in county jail, she could be free in one year and four months, Liner said.

The charge, however, does not make her eligible to serve her sentence in jail instead of prison under the state’s new realignment rules. ”

Mother who tried to sell her baby outside Walmart for $25 is jailed for four years – after ASKING judge for prison time

[Daily Mail 6/21/12]

Salinas mother can’t handle probation; asks for prison sentence

[Monterey Herald 6/20/12 by Julia Reynolds]

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