Woman charged with abuse, accused of filling boy's mouth with soap, taping it shut

A man who went to pick up a child last week at a home on Old Washington Highway near Dayton, Tenn., found an 8-year-old boy inside -- bent over, wrapped in clear packing tape, and struggling to breathe.

The tape was wrapped around his mouth and jaws and his hair and body were soaked in sweat. The man didn't know the boy's mouth had been filled with dish soap.

Authorities say 32-year-old Amy Oliver - charged in the investigation launched last Friday with aggravated assault, aggravated child abuse and neglect and felony reckless endangerment - is being held on a $400,000 bond pending a hearing today in Rhea County General Sessions Court.

Investigator Rocky Potter said the man who discovered the boy grabbed the child he was there to pick up and ran out to call 911. Oliver is not the parent of any of the children who were at the home last week.

When officers got to the home, the tape was gone but a sticky substance was still on the boy's skin, Potter said.

The boy "said his guardian had put dish soap in his mouth and taped his mouth shut and taped his jaws and everything," Potter said. The boy couldn't open his mouth and had to swallow.

"While I was interviewing him I noticed his hands were burned pretty bad and the tops of his fingers," Potter said.

"He said the day before that he 'didn't have idle hands,' and was getting into too much stuff and she put a bleach-type substance in a bucket with some water and made him scrub the bucket," he said. "He told her it was burning and she poured more in it."

After he was treated for his injuries, state officials placed the boy and his older brother and younger sister with a family member. Those two children were not injured.

Potter said Oliver and two other women were present at the home at the time. Oliver's husband, who has not been named, was not there when the incident happened and so far has not been linked to the allegations.

But Oliver ended up with more charges as the investigation continued.

Deputies at the scene got consent to search Oliver's home and found "five or six different needles, some with product in them, pipes, a blowtorch, some finished product in a bag, a couple of prescription pills, some spoons with residue in them," Potter said. Oliver was charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Debra Stringfellow, 36, and Kari Sherrill, 24, each netted the same drug charges as Oliver, officials said. Sherrill also was charged on a couple of misdemeanor warrants. The two women have not been linked to the abuse case.

Potter said he told General Sessions Judge J. Shannon Garrison that the case was "just one step away from being a Landon Robbins case."

Dish soap is an eerie reminder, and that one step in the 2013 case Potter referred to was 5-year-old Landon's death.

That boy's mother, Jessica Robbins, and her boyfriend, Bradley Adcox, were charged with first-degree murder and aggravated child abuse in a case that included 2013 preliminary hearing testimony about forcing the child to drink dish soap and eat cigarette butts for not going to sleep.

Robbins was sentenced in March to 60 years in prison in a guilty plea, and Adcox has not yet been tried in the case.

On Thursday, Potter said Oliver has some criminal history involving drugs but none related to children.

Oliver had kept the children for several years.

"She took these children in from a family friend that had gotten into some trouble a few years ago," Potter said.

But the 8-year-old and his siblings can't be returned to his biological parents because court-ordered requirements to regain custody haven't been completed, he said.

While the boy's bruises will fade away, officials are concerned about the wounds that can't be seen.

"It's the emotional part we're worried about for him," Potter said. "He was just kind of blank; he was kind of in neutral."

Contact staff writer Ben Benton at bbenton@timesfreepress.com or twitter.com/BenBenton or www.facebook.com/ben.benton1 or 423-757-6569.

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