By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
CHEHALIS – A 39-year-old National Guardsman from Chehalis was ordered held on $25,000 bail when he was charged yesterday with second-degree assault of a child.
Steven Grant Williams was arrested by Chehalis police after a Snoqualmie police officer reported the 7-year-old boy’s body was covered in bruises when the child was returned to his grandparents on Tuesday.
Deputy Police Chief Randy Kaut said after the arrest it was one of the most extensive child abuse cases he’s seen in his career.
Authorities describe the injuries to Williams’ girlfriend’s son as two black eyes and including bruises on his back and buttocks. The child told the police officer on Tuesday his mother’s boyfriend had bound him with black tape, covered his eyes and mouth and beat him with a belt, according to charging documents.
The boy, who lives with his paternal grandparents in another county, had been visiting for two or three weeks with his 27-year-old mother and Williams who live in Chehalis.
In Lewis County Superior Court on Friday afternoon, Deputy Prosecutor Colin Hayes told a judge the photographs paint “quite a different picture” than the words in the charging documents convey.
The whites of the child’s eyes were substantially red and somebody had written in black pen on his buttocks, “stop staring”, Hayes said.
Second-degree assault of a child is a felony with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. The class “B” felony involves an adult recklessly or intentionally inflicting substantial bodily harm, or knowingly inflicting harm which by design causes pain or agony equivalent to that produced by torture upon someone younger than age 13.
Defense attorney Bob Schroeter when he argued for lower bail on Friday suggested perhaps his client shouldn’t be charged with a crime.
“These charges only came up when he went back to stay with his grandmother,” Schroeter said.
The Chehalis Police Department on Friday morning said they are investigating the mother as well.
The couple moved to Chehalis about five months ago, after Williams was discharged from the Army, according to Schroeter. The 39-year-old now serves in the Washington National Guard with a unit based in Kent, Schroeter said.
Charging documents say this was the first time the boy had come to visit the pair since they moved to Washington.
The mother works at night and Williams who is otherwise unemployed spent more time with the boy because his mother sleeps during the day, Williams told detectives.
Both the mother and Williams suggested the child’s black eyes might have come from him hitting his head on a lamp in the night or could be related to a bug bite, according to charging documents.
Charging documents offer Williams’ account he gave for some of the bruises as told to Chehalis police detectives.
Williams said he was trying to teach the boy about personal hygiene and when they would have him take a shower before bedtime, and Williams tried to wash the boy’s hair, he had to hold him because the boy would thrash around, scream and yell. The child would bang his shin, elbow or back against the bathtub, he said.
Williams said the bruises on the boy’s wrists and shoulders were from holding him in the shower. During the washings, he never really hit his head that hard, Williams told detectives.
Williams also said he spanked the boy on his bare bottom for lying, and the child bruises easily.
His arraignment is set for Thursday with a court-appointed attorney.
Tags: By Sharyn L. Decker, news reporter