Judge gives woman max for torturing kids
ZANESVILLE – The primary caretaker of two Zanesville children who endured months of torture at the hands of their guardians was sentenced to 54 to 59-and-a-half years in prison Monday.
While she is not accused of perpetrating some of the most violent acts inflicted on the young boy and girl, Priscilla Meachem was found guilty of participating in their abuse.
She and her boyfriend, Elijah Waltz, previously pleaded guilty to two firstdegree felony counts of kidnapping, two second-degree felony counts of felonious assault and two second-degree felony counts of endangering children. Waltz was convicted on two additional counts of felonious assault and was sentenced to 70 to 75-and-a-half years in prison.
According to Muskingum County Assistant Prosecutor John Litle, Meachem allowed Waltz to abuse the 10-year-old girl and 11-year-old boy for nearly half a year.
“The case showcases the degree of human evil which exists even in a safe community. The defendant’s behavior here was not only monstrous and unspeakable, but also relentless,” Litle wrote in a sentencing memorandum to the court.
For five months, the children, then ages 9 and 11, survived what members of local law enforcement agree as being the worst case of child abuse they’ve seen.
“This is not just the worst case of abuse, but probably the worst case, period,” Detective Bryan Ruff said.
He explained that while the children will physically heal, they’ll have to mentally live with the abuse for the rest of their lives.
In a sentencing memorandum to the court, Litle wrote that Meachem “stood by and assisted as her co-offender (Waltz) beat (the) children with anything at hand. Tied them up. Duct taped them. Mutilated their genitalia. Starved them. She ate in front of them as they starved and while they were zip-tied to household items. Isolation. Emotional torture. Endless tales of ways she and her co-offender would kill them and what they would do to their bodies. All while the defendant sometimes participated, sometimes did nothing, and as she consistently refused the children’s desperate pleas for rescue.”
He noted that a caseworker emotionally compared the children’s physical appearance to that of a Holocaust survivor.
The children were severely underweight and had bruising and scars on their bodies when they were rescued from their abusers.
“The summary reads like a series of scenes from Schindler’s List. Even a person professionally immersed in the worst deeds committed by man is forced to take a pause and collect themselves while viewing the disclosures provided by the children to medical professionals at Nationwide Children’s Hospital,” Litle wrote.
Investigators believe the brother and sister were on the brink of death had a teacher not reported her suspicions of abuse to children’s services.
“The teacher doing what she was supposed to do led us to this investigation,” Ruff said. “If we wouldn’t have gotten the details and gotten there when we did, it’s hard to tell where it would have led.”
According to Assistant Prosecutor Molly Martin, the children were attending school online in the fall when a teacher began noticing signs of abuse.
“Mr. Waltz was observed yelling at the children and belittling them during their online classes,” she said during a plea hearing.
When the 11-year-old boy asked to go to the bathroom several times in a 20minute period, Waltz ignored the requests.
The abuse was reported to Muskingum County Adult and Child Protective Services on Sept. 30 after the kids appeared online for school with their heads shaved bald. That same day, Martin said the computer camera turned off twice. One time the boy returned holding his mouth as if in pain and without speaking.
In the following days, the children were removed from the home and placed into foster care.
They’ve since been placed in a permanent home.
“This hopefully is their last stop,” Welch said.
At sentencing, Meachem’s attorney, Amy Otto, agreed that the case was horrible.
“Priscilla should have done more,” Otto said. “She should have done better for (the) children.”
When Meachem met Waltz, they were at church and she thought he was a good person. She was unaware of his past criminal history and numerous reports of domestic disputes on file at the Zanesville Police Department, according to Otto.
In 2017, Welch said Waltz’s own 18month-old son died in his care. Bruising was found on the baby, but not enough evidence was available to file charges.
“Unfortunately, there’s some investigations where we’re unable to prove what we suspect. And if we can’t prove what we suspect, then we can’t bring criminal charges,” Welch said.
Nonetheless, Meachem, Waltz and the children moved in together into a tiny apartment on Adair Avenue where the abuse began.
Otto explained that Meachem, who has an intellectual disability, was also being abused and feared they would all be killed if she did something about it.
“They’re all being controlled by this monster,” Otto said.
Those factors were taken into consideration when Meachem was charged, both Welch and Litle said, which ultimately shaved 16 years off her sentence.
Still, prosecutors and the judge believe Meachem was culpable for her actions.
“You know better than I do what it looked like, what it sounded like and what happened,” Judge Mark Fleegle said.
Fleegle brought up Meachem’s own history of children’s services investigations.
According to Litle, Meachem has a 15year record in several counties for not taking care of children.
“A total of 12 investigations of the defendant have been completed by various children’s services agencies, beginning in 2005,” Litle wrote. “The allegations related to these investigations spanned neglect, suspected sexual abuse, failure to provide healthcare, unsafe transportation of the children, abandoning them in the home or at parks, physical abuse, and dependency.”
The investigations resulted in one child being removed from her care.
“All of these things occurred before the defendant even met her co-offender,” Litle wrote.
At sentencing, Meachem tearfully apologized for what happened.
“I should have protected them,” she said. “I should have called somebody.”
Fleegle held Meachem accountable the crimes committed and handed down the maximum sentence.
“I think she got the appropriate sentence for what was allowed, and if more would have been allowed to be given, I think she should have deserved that too,” Ruff said.
The Blue Jackets are once again the center of the hockey universe, with coach John Tortorella in the crosshairs of the focus. Torts has a knack for this.
A little more than two weeks after Pierre-luc Dubois was benched and then traded, Tortorella sat Patrik Laine for almost half of a game Monday night. This headline story generated a tweetstorm of laughter, rage and everything in between among the legions who’ve been trying to psychoanalyze Tortorella for 20 years.
Here in Columbus, there were those who stood firm by the coach and those who wondered how he could shorthand his team by stapling one of the most lethal scorers in the league to the bench in a tie game. The Blue Jackets wound up hanging on for a 3-2 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes.
“(Tortorella) has a strict standard and a set of values I actually agree with,” Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen said. “We agree together for the organization and the culture we're trying to build here.”
As our Brian Hedger reported, Laine's benching had more to do with something he said to a Jackets assistant than anything else (like, blowing defensive assignments).
“We're by it,” Tortorella declared Wednesday. “We're by it. Everything's fine. Thanks for asking.”
Laine issued a mea culpa.
“You know, I think that's something from the coach, that it doesn't matter who you are,” Laine said. “If you do something (wrong), you'll get benched. … You deserve to get benched.”
Yeah, but will you sign a new contract with the Blue Jackets? That's the question on the minds of Jackets fans, and Tortorella's critics, if not Tortorella himself.
The man has a history.
The Dubois/laine benchings have elements of Tortorella's first notable example of the coach's message-delivery system. In 2001, in his seventh week on the job with the Tampa Bay Lightning, Tortorella sat Vincent Lecavalier.
It was the first of many benchings for Lecavalier, a former No. 1 overall draft pick.
Heading into the next season, as negotiations on a new contract stalled, Lecavalier did not immediately report to camp. Tortorella sat him the first two games and stripped him of the captaincy.
Lecavalier's agent pushed for a trade and then-lightning GM Rick Dudley put a deal in place with Toronto. A higher-up in the Lightning front office stepped in and quashed the deal.
Two years later — as Tortorella was leading the Lightning to a Stanley Cup title and Lecavalier was developing, in fits and starts, into a monster — Dudley's replacement, Jay Feaster, told Sports Illustrated:
“Many players come into my office and say, ‘(Tortorella) hates me. He hates me.' I always tell them, ‘Don't flatter yourself. He hates me, too.' My point is, his style is the same with everyone in the organization. If something needs to be done with a player, he does it right now and he's coming at you.”
By the end of Tortorella's final season in Tampa, in 2008, Lecavalier was on his way to a 52-goal, 108-point season and Tortorella was telling the Canadian Press, “He's the best player in the league.”
Like many others who had a checkered player-coach relationship with Tortorella, Lecavalier often says that he didn't appreciate the impact Tortorella had on his career until he retired. And then he did.
In New York, there was an instance where Tortorella left Marian Gaborik on the bench in a shootout with a postseason bid riding on the outcome. Gaborik scored 42 goals that season. The Rangers lost the shootout and missed the playoffs.
Tortorella's relationship with Gaborik was fraught. Tortorella's relationship with Brad Richards was one of mutual respect; the two won a Cup together in Tampa. But that didn't stop the coach from scratching Richards from two playoff games. The coach thought the player was underperforming.
“This is a Conn Smythe winner, a guy that I've grown up with, a guy that I love as a person and a player,” Tortorella said when he scratched Richards. “But I have to make that decision regarding this. Kiss my (gluteus) if you want to write anything different. It's not about blaming that guy, and I don't want anybody to pile on him.”
Their relationship was strained for a time.
On a Lightning-themed podcast recorded last year, Richards said, “Torts is Torts . ... Once you get it in your head that this is all a plan to win and make our team better, once you buy into that, your team has a great time and you have success. … Torts was trying to turn us into pros.”
Tortorella's history is complicated. There are those who believe he goes out of his way to chop down stars, maybe to suit his own ego. There are those who point out that, if he benched everyone who blew a coverage or didn't block a shot, he'd have two players on the ice by the final horn. Which means he picks his spots, and his players, when he wants to make a point. Or a splash.
I think Tortorella is motivated by trying to do the right thing, at least as he sees it. I think he had to bench Dubois for dogging it, otherwise he loses the rest of the bench. I think he had to set an example for Laine — even though it was just Laine's fourth game with the team, and the optics were horrible, and it put the GM in a terrible spot.
“It seems like a lot of drama at one time, but in reality, it's not,” Kekalainen said. “We've dealt with it and I think we'll be better because of it. All of it.”
Winning heals. We shall see whether the Jackets, struggling in so many areas of their game, can make the playoffs. If not, maybe none of this is over.
marace@dispatch.com