Court documents released Thursday describe the injuries that an Allen boy suffered last month, allegedly at the hands of his mother.
Melissa Smith, an Allen police officer, is charged with child abuse in the case. Her husband, Darin Smith, is charged with official oppression from the same incident. Darin Smith, who is the child's stepfather, is also an Allen police officer.
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The affidavits say Melissa Smith
hit her son in the head with a metal spoon and spanked him with a belt hard enough to leave a bruise. They also say she
slapped the boy across the face hard enough that marks were still visible three days later.
According to the affidavits, a doctor who examined the boy's injuries found several deep bruises on his body, and a mark on his scalp where the boy says he was hit with a spoon. In her report, the doctor wrote, "This child clearly is the victim of child physical abuse."
The boy told police his mother had hit him with the spoon "because he didn't get up and get a glass of water quickly enough."
The affidavits also say after Melissa Smith attacked her son, his stepfather handcuffed the boy,
"threw him to the ground, strangled him, picked him up" and drove him to the Allen Police Department as if to put him in jail.
According to the affidavits, Darin Smith admitted to an investigator that
he handcuffed the child and tried to scare him into thinking he was under arrest.
The affidavit goes on to say that Melissa Smith admitted to a state investigator that she had hit her son with a spoon and a belt. She said
she struck him because he was being disrespectful to her. She also
attributed her son's bruises to medication that he is taking.
The investigator asked Melissa Smith at what point her disciplinary techniques "would rise to the level of abuse,"
she replied that "if she beat (her son) with a baseball bat and broke his bones then that would be abuse."
Melissa and Darin Smith are both out of jail on bond.
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