Isaiah Jeremiah Hicks

WAYNESVILLE, Mo. (Sept. 10, 2012) — A Waynesville man faces Class C felony charges for whipping his girlfriend’s 5-year-old son.

According to court records. Isaiah Nehemiah Hicks, 26, faces two to seven years in state prison, a special term of one year in county jail, and a $5,000 fine for an Aug. 30 incident in which he whipped the boy on his “back and legs causing abrasions and bruises.”

Those bruises were severe. Court records indicate that the child’s father brought him to the sheriff’s office on Aug. 31 where he had “approximately 5 obvious linear abrasions across his back from the upper right shoulder to the left hip,” “about 3 linear abrasions across his back from the bottom of his rib cage and traversing his back to the bottom of his rib cage,” and “an approximately 5 cm circular abrasion with associated contusion on his (upper) left thigh.” Those marks were visible about 20 hours after the incident, according to the deputy’s report on the incident.

Child abuse investigators interviewed the child who told them that Hicks “had ‘whooped’ him with a belt in the kitchen at his mother’s house” and that “his mother was present when the whipping occurred.”

The child’s parents are divorced. According to court records, the father said he confronted his ex-wife after observing the marks but the mother initially said she had put the marks on her son; the father said he “believes this was stated to diffuse a potentially volatile situation.”

This isn’t Hicks’ first domestic violence case. He was also arrested by St. Robert police following a Jan. 18, 2011 incident in which, according to police, he attacked his girlfriend leaving “a large ‘knot’ type injury” to her brow line. That violence followed an incident in which Hicks questioned some phone numbers on his girlfriend’s cell phone; when Hicks refused to give the phone back to the girlfriend, she “reached for (her) phone but snagged Isaiah’s ‘chain’ necklace and broke it,” leading to Hicks pushing his girlfriend to the floor twice, grabbing her foot, and dragging her across the floor before kicking her in the head with what court documents describe as an “‘angle kick’ like a soccer style kick” Hicks then prevented his girlfriend from successfully speaking to a 911 operator after she dialed the phone; she fled the home and made a walk-in report of domestic assault to St. Robert police.

Police requested three charges of felonious restraint, second-degree domestic assault, and third-degree domestic assault by causing isolation by depriving telecommunications with 911. Assistant Prosecutor Ken Clayton filed only the second-degree domestic assault charge.