2 women charged after child hospitalized with hypothermia

Complaint: Girl forced to stay in cold bathwater

Two women have been charged with child abuse after a 3-year-old girl was hospitalized with “profound hypothermia” after being forced to stay in a cold bathtub for a lengthy period of time, according to a criminal complaint.

Tiffany Desvigne, the child’s 18-year-old aunt, and Adelle Rigsby, the 49-year-old grandmother, have been arrested on suspicion of child abuse causing great bodily harm, false imprisonment and other felony charges in the case. Both women were being held in jail on $25,000 cash-only bail.

Kipp Curtis, a longtime family friend, said Desvigne cares for two of her older sister’s six children. He said the event was an “unfortunate accident.”

“Tiffany is, in my opinion, one of the sweetest, kindest most caring young women you could ever meet,” he said on Saturday. “It was an unfortunate accident and it is being made into, what seems to me, a lot more than it ever was.”

On Jan. 29, paramedics rushed the 3-year-old girl to University of New Mexico Hospital after she was found not breathing in a bathtub. Her body temperature was 80 degrees, 18 degrees below normal, according to the complaint filed in Metropolitan Court.

The child’s current medical condition was not included in the criminal complaint. Curtis said the child was doing better and is sitting up and breathing on her own, though CYFD has not given the family a recent update.

Officer Simon Drobik, an Albuquerque Police Department spokesman, said it’s unknown if the child suffered any brain damage.

According to the criminal complaint, Desvigne said that she was giving the child a bath and the water was originally warm but accidentally got cold.

She said she left the bathroom and when she returned the child was facedown in the water, the complaint states. She said she didn’t know how long she left the child alone because sometimes she blacks out.

Devisgne told police that in the past they had disciplined the child and her 2-year-old brother by forcing them into a cold bath, an APD detective wrote in the court document.

Physicians with UNMH Child Abuse Response Team concluded that the girl’s “profound hypothermia was the result of prolonged and forced immersion into cold water — a rare form of child abuse,” according to the complaint.

CYFD told police both women share responsibility for the girl. The agency now has custody of the child.