The police officer, James Foster, 35, of Pittsburgh faces charges of assault and endangering the welfare of a child after an emergency room doctor found bruises on the child’s thigh and reported the potential abuse by calling a child abuse hotline, a police spokesperson said.
Investigators allege in the criminal complaint that the child’s mother found bruises on the six-year-old’s thigh shortly after he returned from a visit with Foster. She then immediately took the child to Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh where Dr. Maria Antonucci reported the possible abuse by calling the hotline.
The child told his mother and investigators with the Pittsburgh Police Sex Assault and Family Crisis Unit that after learning the child received a “blue sticker for being bad” at school, Foster took him upstairs, removed his pants, and struck him several times with both a belt and his hand and then placed him in the shower.
Foster also “smacked him in his head,” the child told police, for giving wrong answers to school questions Foster was asking him, the complaint alleges.
In a Protection from Abuse petition filed by the child’s mother, she alleges when she went to take pictures of the bruise on his thigh, the child “started crying really hard saying he was scared his dad will beat him again.”
A forensic interview conducted by a child abuse specialist indicated that the child, “has linear bruising on his left thigh suggestive of being hit with an implement,” the complaint alleges.
Foster, the complaint says, admitted to striking the child saying, “Mr. Foster stated …he bent the [child] over with his head facing him and gave him three firm open handed strikes to his left butt cheek.”
The child never complained of any pain the next day and Foster said he did not notice any bruising, the complaint alleges.
Foster has been placed on unpaid leave after police completed an internal review of the allegations, a police spokesperson said.
UPDATE: January 29-Charges were dismissed against Mr. Foster at a court hearing Friday. However, he still remains on unpaid administrative leave. The dismissal of the charges does not by itself mean that Foster cannot possibly face internal disciplinary action by the department.
