A woman has been charged with abusing her 13-year-old son as well as the 65-year-old man who took them both in nearly a decade ago when they were homeless and living in a car.
Jasmine Jean-Baptiste, 31, was arrested in Miami Shores, Florida and is now facing charges of aggravated child abuse causing great bodily harm and aggravated abuse of an elderly or disabled adult, according to the arrest affidavit seen by ABC affiliate WPLG.
When speaking with the 65-year-old man in the case, police reported that he “became visibly emotional and choked up when reassured that we were there to support him.” He purportedly told them, “I’d rather you worry about the kids.”
Police became involved in the case when Jean-Baptiste reported her son missing at around 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, hours after he’d run away from home amid what he later told police was one of his mother’s usual punishments.
Ironically, it was the same punishment his allegedly abusive stepfather had forced him to endure, and a big part of the reason his mother and he wound up living on the street in a car.
The teen told authorities, according to their legal filings, that he would be forced to “sit in a squatted position for hours on end,” during which he was denied water. These punishments came when he was “bad in school,” according to the arrest affidavit.
Police found the boy at a school where a woman described as his godmother in their reports worked. He’d allegedly run away while being punished when his mother left him unsupervised to take a bath.
Opening up to police, the teen told them that his stepfather had abused him so badly his body had been scarred by the beatings. He said that one beating was so severe, he lost a tooth as a result of it, according to the affidavit.
He claimed that after his mother removed him and his sisters from that situation, moving them to Miami Shores, his mother wound up committing the same forms of abuse as his stepfather, which included allegedly being slapped repeatedly and hit with a belt buckle hard enough to leave a permanent scar.
The woman described as his godmother corroborated the boy’s claims of abuse, according to the reports, while a coach at his school said that they had recently overheard Jean-Baptiste say, “I am going to kill him,” in reference to her son.
This incident was reported to school officials, per the coach, who then told police they’d contacted the Florida Department of Children and Families.
The man who took Jean-Baptiste and her son in also corroborated the alleged abuse against the boy, while sharing his own story of living with the woman for the past nine years.
In the arrest report, the man admitted that he was “scared” of Jean-Baptiste, saying this was why he never reported any of the alleged abuse. WPLG does report, though, that there was a previous arrest for her beating him.
“She will jump on me,” he told detectives, per the report. He also claimed an instance where she allegedly “struck him across the face with a knife sharpening tool.”
In one moment, the man alleged that Jean-Baptiste “sucker-punched him,” per the affidavit, which left him partially blind in one eye, and knocked out one of his teeth.
“She is f–king strong,” the man reportedly told police, adding, “I can’t hit her. You know, a male would be blamed for hitting a female.”
Instead, he purportedly showed them various locking mechanisms he’d purchased in an effort to keep her out of his living space.
Police also spoke with witnesses, reporting in their arrest affidavit that one “witness reported observing a significant and consistent pattern of abuse, including multiple instances of battery on various occasions.”
They said the man “further provided photographs from various incidents, which depicted bruising, contusions and facial lacerations consistent with his account of abuse.”
Police wrote that Jean-Baptiste “exploit(ed) his compassion and concern for her children.” In the affidavit, the man was described as “physically shaking, with watery eyes,” and that he “appeared to be in fear” while speaking with detectives.
When confronted with the allegations of abuse levied against her, Jean-Baptiste initially told police that she never hit her son or the man who’d taken them in, according to the arrest report.
She also said she had no idea where her son’s scars came from, per the report, and claimed that he’d lost the tooth by hitting his mouth on a door at school. This story later changed, though, with police detailing that she ultimately admitted the scars were from his stepfather’s abuse.
When she was confronted about the squatting punishment, Jean-Baptiste allegedly told authorities she only ever had her son do this for “15 to 20 minutes.” The reports states that she then also “changed the story” on this matter, though WPLG reports that this statement was redacted in the report.
Also redacted, according to police, was an alleged admission from Jean-Baptiste that she had also abused the man who took her and her son in.
Jean-Baptiste is being held without bond at the Turner Guilford Knight Correction Center.
