PD: Mom Who Hit Daughter With Belt Charged With Child Abuse

A city woman was charged with child abuse after a DCF investigation determined she had hit her 10-year-old daughter with a belt after the girl "mouthed back," according to Middletown Police.

On July 23 at 8:40 a.m., Marlen Benitez, 35, of Thomas Street turned herself in on an outstanding warrant following an investigation that began on June 8 at 6:33 p.m., when the girl and her father reported a bruise on her arm. The report says the father said after picking her up after school on June 7, according to the report. 

The girl first told her father she fell off the bed but the younger daughter said Benitez had hit her sister with a belt. The report says the girl gets hit at least once a day and Benitez had told her not to tell her father or she'd be hit again.

The bruise, police say, was five inches long and two inches wide, and when Benitez was questioned, she said the daughter had come home from a field trip on June 4 with the mark.

A Department of Children and Families investigation revealed the 10-year-old was folding laundry when her mother became angry she was doing it wrong and found expensive pants the girl wore infrequently so Benitez hit her several times with a belt, the report says. When the 10-year-old put her arm up to shield her face, the belt hit her arm, and "the hardest thing was she could not cry because if she did her mother would hit her more," the report says.

Benitez locked her in her room until the girl folded the laundry correctly, police say, and the girl said she loves her mom but doesn't want to live with her if she'll be hit again, which happens often when Benitez is angry.

The report says Benitez often uses her shoe or a belt to hit the younger daughter and doesn't treat her younger brother that way but often gets angry with her other young daughter because she has a feeding tube and won't eat. Police say Benitez hit the youngest after she soiled herself and spends lots of time in her bedroom playing on her iPad while the two oldest children are left to take care of the youngest two.

The affidavit says the second oldest daughter was hit by Benitez a year before when she said she wanted to live with her father and his very nice girlfriend, where

she had lived for a year while Benitez was in the hospital after having her twins.

In another incident, the second oldest told police Benitez had fed the girl with the feeding tube bananas and said if she didn't stop coughing she'd hit her and when the girl threw up she hit her with a belt.

Benitez told police on June 12 that she and the 10-year-old had argued over the girl's attitude and disrespect over the clothes being folded so she tried to hit the girl on her buttocks, "briefly disciplining her," but after a struggle hit her arm with the "tip of the belt," according to the report. 

Benitez's husband of five years, father of the twins, said on the evening of the assault, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary and she's a "great mother and very active with the children."

The belt, according to the report, was a child-sized trouser belt.

Benitez was charged with risk of injury to a child and third-degree assault, released on a $2,500 bond and is due back in court Sept. 16.