Everett couple given 8 years apiece in boy’s starving

EVERETT — Shayne Abegg could face a lifetime of physical and psychological problems because of the months he was deprived of food.

On Friday his father, Danny Abegg, was given an 8-year prison sentence for nearly starving his 4-year-old son to death. The south Everett man’s live-in girlfriend, Marilea Mitchell, received the same sentence.

Abegg, 27, and Mitchell, 23, withheld food from Shayne as punishment, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Thomas Wynne said. To the judge, the boy looked like a refugee from a concentration camp.

“It didn’t happen in a day, a week, a month or even three months,” Wynne said. “This is something that went on for at least six months. Many, many decisions were made each day to withhold food. I want to make it very clear: Shayne was not just thin. He was skeletal.”

Wynne reviewed dozens of pictures of Shayne during the two-day trial in December. Many were of the emaciated boy after he was rescued from his father’s apartment last year.

At the time, Shayne weighed just 25 pounds. He couldn’t stand on his own. His hair was falling out. His temperature was 87 degrees, and he had virtually no fat on his body.

The pictures of the starving boy were a stark contrast to those taken three years earlier, just after his first birthday. Shayne then weighed 30 pounds.

“This is not an average case,” Wynne said before imposing the sentences. He likened the pictures of Shayne shown in court to images he had seen while touring Dachau, a Nazi concentration camp in Germany where 43,000 people died.

“A child in the U.S. simply is not treated the way Shayne was treated by Mr. Abegg and Ms. Mitchell,” he said.

Abegg and Mitchell were convicted of first-degree criminal misconduct. Wynne found two aggravating circumstances: Shayne was particularly vulnerable, and the crime was part of an ongoing pattern of abuse.

Snohomish County deputy prosecutor Mark Roe reminded Wynne of the photographs on Friday when he asked the judge to impose a 10-year term for Abegg and Mitchell — the maximum under state law.

“Shayne Abegg wasn’t sent outside without a coat. He wasn’t given a spanking a little too hard. He wasn’t left unattended in a van,” Roe said. “He was starved for months and months and months until he almost died. I can’t imagine it being any worse than this without it being a homicide.”

The defendants’ attorneys have argued that while Abegg and Mitchell were negligent, they weren’t deliberately cruel to Shayne.

Abegg knew his son wasn’t well but he didn’t understand how much Shayne’s health had deteriorated, said his attorney, public defender ­Marybeth Dingledy.

Mitchell was overwhelmed with caring for Shayne and the couple’s 1-year-old daughter, said Mitchell’s attorney Steve Garvey of Everett.

Mitchell, with prisoner chains wrapped around her ample waist, sobbed as she told the judge she was depressed and admitted she could have been a better caregiver to Shayne.

“I’m extremely sorry for everything that Shayne has had to go through,” she said.

The boy’s father didn’t say anything before sentencing.

Shayne came unexpectedly to Abegg about a year before he was taken out of the home in March 2007.

The boy already had developed problems with food. Shayne and his older brother often went hungry when they lived with their mother. They learned to hoard food.

After the boys moved in with their father, they continued to hoard. State social workers told Abegg to leave food out for his children as a way to reassure them that they wouldn’t go hungry again. Instead, Abegg told a caseworker that he worried about the cost of feeding his boys, locked up all the food, and sent them to their room if they got into it, court documents said.

Abegg started to prepare papers to put Shayne up for adoption a week before sheriff’s deputies checked on the boy’s welfare.

A state social worker last visited the family in January 2006 and reported that Shayne appeared in good health. She recommended Shayne get counseling because his family situation had been changing, and his brother no longer lived with him.

The state closed Shayne’s case file in February 2006.

After Shayne was rescued from the home, the state Department of Social and Health Services ordered a review of the boy’s case and concluded that state social workers missed a pattern of abuse and neglect, didn’t follow policy to make sure Shayne was safe and failed to hold his parents more accountable for their son’s well-being.

Seattle lawyer David Moody, hired by Shayne’s court-appointed guardian, plans to file a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the state. He maintains that state workers should have acted faster to remove Shayne from the home.

Shayne, now 5, is in a loving home, Moody said Friday.

His health is improving, but doctors believe he may have cognitive deficiencies that will affect him the rest of his life, he said.

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