Father pleads guilty to assaulting infant daughter

Published 1:30 am Friday, September 2, 2016

EVERETT — By the time she was four months old she had suffered lasting brain damage that promised to rob her of a healthy life.

Her brain was bleeding from recent trauma, and there was evidence of an older head injury. Her body stiffened and twitched from seizures. Her left forearm was slightly deformed. Several of her ribs had been broken, likely a couple of months before she was seen by doctors at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.

In January, the girl turned 2. Relatives care for her now. She remains in a vegetative state and relies on a feeding tube. Her prognosis is unknown.

Her father, Jacob Lee Tusken, admitted Thursday that he abused his infant daughter, leaving her with permanent disabilities and an uncertain future.

Tusken, 22, pleaded guilty to first-degree assault of a child. In exchange for his plea, prosecutors agreed to drop a criminal mistreatment charge. Tusken faces up to 10 years in prison when he is sentenced in October. He remains jailed without bail.

Snohomish County Superior Court Judge George Appel signed an order Thursday forbidding Tusken from having contact with his daughter.

“If she ever does get better or improves,” and wants to have contact with her father, she can seek to have the order amended, Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Jarett Goodkin told the judge.

Bothell police began investigating Tusken in 2014 after being contacted by Child Protective Services. Tusken and the girl’s mother took the baby to the hospital because of seizure activity. A medical team discovered that the girl’s brain was bleeding and suspected child abuse.

Doctors concluded that the infant likely suffered a traumatic injury two to three days before she was brought to the hospital and the symptoms had become worse as her brain swelled. They also found an old brain injury, Bothell detectives wrote.

Tusken cared for his daughter while the girl’s teenage mother was attending cosmetology school. He also told detectives that he woke up at night to feed and change the baby because the girl’s mother didn’t hear her cries.

The baby’s mother reported seeing Tusken be rough with the child about a dozen times, including one occasion when she walked into the bathroom and saw the baby face down on the ground. Tusken was straddling the infant and he had his hand around the back of her neck, holding her down, court papers said.

During their investigation detectives seized the parents’ cellphones. They found photographs of the baby with injuries to her lip, left eye and head. One picture taken May 13, 2014, shows that the girl’s head appears abnormally swollen, records show.

There were videos of the baby having seizures. Tusken’s phone also showed that on numerous occasions someone searched online for information about infant seizures, sleep patterns, rib fractures and broken bones. Police discovered that on March 30, 2014, the phone was used to search Google for “Can a two month old break or crack their ribs?”

Doctors told detectives that a baby’s ribs are pliable and it would take a considerable amount of force to break them. The doctors also said that a person would likely hear or feel the ribs snap.

Tusken’s online history also showed that someone was doing research on how much babies can remember, police wrote.

The couple and the child lived with the woman’s grandparents, who at one point confronted the baby’s parents about the girl’s injuries. Tusken pulled his T-shirt over his head and didn’t offer an explanation, according to a police affidavit.

The doctor stated that the child’s “neurological injuries are permanent and (she) is clearly a victim of multiple abusive events,” detectives wrote.

Diana Hefley: 425-339-3463; hefley@heraldnet.com.