Mother accused of beating 10-year-old girl with power cord

NASSAU BAY, TX -- A Nassau Bay mother is facing a felony charge after her 10-year-old daughter told a school nurse that she was denied food and beaten with an extension cord as a form of discipline.

Judith Condebarca-Gonzalez, 39, is charged with injury to a child.

In mid-December, the child visited the nurse's office at Stewart Elementary in Kemah, complaining of headaches and dizziness, according to court documents. The girl explained that she had gotten in trouble at school for writing a letter about a fellow student, calling him bad names. When she went home and told her mother, the girl says her mother punished her by making her strip, then beating her with an electrical cord and not allowing her to eat for a day.

"The chief complaint she made was that she was struck upon the head and back and legs with an object," said Nassau Bay Police Sgt. Glenn Sharp.

A relative at the apartment where the girl and her mother lived shut the door on Eyewitness News when we visited.

School officials reported the allegations to police and the girl was taken to a hospital for treatment. Doctors say the girl had multiple bruises and welts on her back, shoulders, legs and hands that looked as if they were caused by an electrical extension cord.

"You should talk to your children and discipline your children but never hit them with something like that," said Lori Knight, a volunteer at Stewart Elementary who also has a grandchild in the school.

Knight was relieved to hear that Stewart Elementary counselors got police involved right away. Police say when they first took the child to the hospital to be checked out, Condebarca-Gonzalez even showed up.

"She did show up at the hospital, and she refused to corporate," said Sgt. Sharp.

The mother is now in jail. The child is staying with relatives. She is back at school, but in a different school district.