Burnet woman gets 5 life sentences
Misty Rae Hopkins, 49, found guilty of nine child abuse charges.
A judge in Burnet County this week handed down five back-toback life sentences to a woman in what he called the worst case of abuse he had even seen.
It took a jury about an hour to find Misty Rae Hopkins, 49, guilty of five counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and four charges of indecency with a child.
Charges in the case related to sexual abuse that happened in Burnet County between 1999 and 2005. However, testimony during trial showed that Hopkins abused one of her daughters from the time she was at least 7 years old until she was 21, according to the district attorney’s office for the 33rd and 424th state judicial districts.
Four of Hopkins’ children also testified that Hopkins and her now-deceased husband, John Hopkins, created an atmosphere of isolation, hiding the children from relatives and the outside world and keeping them out of schools, the office said in a statement.
John and Misty Rae Hopkins abused the children, as a couple and individually, the district attorney’s office said. The abuse remained unreported until the children were able to escape the home after all had turned 17 years old. The chief victim in the case reported the abuse to police outside of Burnet County in 2014.
Prosecutor Stacy Burke called the Hopkins’ crimes the worst abuse case she had ever encountered in her career. Burke called Hopkins a “truly evil person who tortured her children.”
John Hopkins served as a pastor at a local church in Burnet when the abuse occurred. Misty Rae Hopkins’ trial began Monday and ended Wednesday with 424th District Judge Evan Stubbs sentencing her to the life sentences, as well as 20 years in prison for each of the indecency charges.
In sentencing her, Stubbs addressed Hopkins directly: “Yesterday, you said that your hus-