"Restricting movement is also fairly common," Wilson adds. "Usually that involves locking the kid in rooms, which itself is another form of emotional abuse."
The actions of the abuser, often someone who does not have a strong emotional connection to the victim, will escalate, becoming, says Wilson, bizarre or even criminal—but not necessarily insane.
Sam Bosma
Steven Dewall
The house in Carnation.
Details
Related Content
More About
"It isn't a matter of psychiatric ailment in these cases," says Wilson. "The parents are just extremely stubborn. They have some beliefs about the right and authority of parents to control their kid's behavior. Usually, the kid has gotten to them in some way. That's when they get into this power struggle, and they will go to practically any lengths to win."
Of her relationship with Janet, Long told authorities that she never wanted to be a stepmother. All their problems started there, she said.
The nadir of Long's relationship with her stepdaughter occurred sometime around the end of 2007. In police reports and court documents, this bottoming-out is referred to as the "toilet incident."
According to Janet's recollection, it began on the second floor of the Pomeroy home. She had been "talking back" to her stepmother all day, and in response Long was brandishing a shoe, with which she planned to spank Janet. This was a common occurrence in the Pomeroy household.
"I talk back a lot," Janet told investigators. "It's hard to keep my feelings back because I'm depressed all the time, and I'm always having bad dreams about her attacking me."
In her attempt to discipline Janet, Long fastened some duct tape over Janet's mouth, using it also to bind her hands—tightly enough to cut off circulation. Long then dragged her stepdaughter to the shower, where Janet says she attempted to overcome the tape and drink from the showerhead. Long finally dragged her to the toilet and, according to Janet, twice shoved her head into the toilet water.
Long later apologized, but the "power struggle" she told King County detectives she'd been locked into with Janet continued unabated.
Dr. Emiko Tajima of the University of Washington School of Social Work says there are no clear answers about whether stepparents are more likely than birth parents to abuse children. "In studying child abuse, there is a wide range of determinants of risk," she says, of which the stepparent/child relationship is just one. However, a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study indicates that of 859,000 child-abuse cases reported in the U.S. in 2007, nearly 80 percent involved "parents of the child," as opposed to an unmarried partner of the parent or other type of caregiver. And of that figure, only 4.2 percent were stepparents. The generally accepted rationale for stepparent-inflicted abuse, according to Harborview's Berliner, is that stepparents "have less of a parental investment or bond with the victim."
In August 2008, Janet was placed in foster care with a family in Lake Forest Park. Her brother soon followed. Messages left for Dwight Thompson, the pair's foster father, were unreturned.
Late last month, Thompson and other members of the Pomeroy children's foster family huddled around the kids as they sat in the half-empty courtroom while Jon Pomeroy lobbied King County Judge William Downing for a lenient sentence. Shortly after hearing arguments, the judge summoned Janet—who, Thompson subsequently told the assembled press, had returned to school and grown a full six inches since being removed from the Pomeroy home—to the front of the courtroom to read a letter aloud.
She stopped short of the bench without uttering a word, and quietly returned to the gallery, where she bowed her head and began to cry.
vcoleman@seattleweekly.com
An interview with Janet and Carson's foster dad, Dwight Thompson, is online here. Thompson and his wife, Irene, of Lake Forest Park, took in the children last year. In the interview, Thompson describes how Janet has been faring since she was removed from the Carnation home and what the family plans to say at the November 6 sentencing hearing for Rebecca Long.
