WOODSTOCK – A Johnsburg woman was acquitted on Tuesday of battering a 3-year-old disabled girl whom she had been caring for as a nurse.
Annette M. Freels, 44, had been accused of shaking the arm of and cussing at the girl, who was born 13 weeks premature and now ventilator-dependent for 16 hours a day.
At the defendant's request, the trial was heard by McHenry County Judge Joseph Condon, rather than a jury. Condon issued a directed finding, which means that the acquittal came at the close of the prosecution's case before the defense put on its case.
Freels' supporters began clapping after the verdict was issued and Freels began crying.
The girl's mother, Christine Krauser, testified that she woke up in the night and saw Freels sleeping, but said Freels got up when a ventilator alarm when off. Freels was working through a nursing agency and had been caring for the girl overnight on Sundays.
Krauser said that through about a four-inch gap in a bedroom doorway, she observed Freels call her daughter a name and shake her by the arm.
Defense attorney Jamie Wombacher said that the girl would often remove the ventilator attachment in order to get attention and was otherwise combative.
In his ruling, Condon said that the alleged name-calling was not at issue. "We can all call each other names until we're blue in the face," but it does not amount to battery.
Condon said that the act of grabbing the girl's arm and shaking it did not rise to the level of battery, either.
"When I spanked my children, they were afraid of me," he said. "I was not aggravatingly battering them."
While Krauser was "perfectly justified" in firing Freels, the girl was engaging in self-destructive behavior that required adult intervention, which Freels did by turning off a ventilator alarm and applying splints that would immobilize the girl's limbs.
As a result of the charge against her, Freels remained licensed as a registered nurse but was required to have a chaperone present during all patient encounters pending the outcome of the criminal proceedings.