A mother and stepfather from Detroit, Michigan, were found guilty this week of torturing and murdering a 5-year-old child and assaulting his 3-year-old sibling after jurors were moved to tears on a regular basis by damning messages and horrifying evidence of abuse.
According to the Detroit News, the guilty judgments against Valeria Hamilton and Shane Shelton were returned quickly on Wednesday.
Wayne County prosecutors confirmed Shelton and Hamilton’s charges in January 2023, saying that Ethan Belcher was tortured to death in a residence with other children.
The Detroit Police Department responded to a 911 call in the afternoon of Sunday, January 22, 2023, to the Spring Garden Street residence where Ethan was murdered.
During the arraignment, prosecutor Matthew Makepeace informed the court that Ethan had loop-shaped abrasions on his body, indicating that he had been beaten with a cord-like instrument, according to the newspaper.
According to the prosecutor, the boy developed gangrene on one of his toes, and other children in the residence informed police that Shelton and Hamilton beat Ethan and his sibling on a regular basis. They would also confine the two in the basement, which allegedly contained feces and sewage.
Ethan’s aunt, Ashley Belcher, told local NBC station WDIV that she reported the abuse to Child Protective Services a year before her loved one died, but the children stayed with Hamilton and Shelton after an investigation. She also claimed that Ethan had been burned with cigarettes.
“He has over 100 cigarette burns on his body, he had frostbitten feet, and he was missing a toe that never was taken care of,” Belcher told me.
Belcher cried in a later interview when she learned that WDIV will be reporting on how many more similarly placed children in the state were projected to die from abuse and neglect in 2020 and 2021.
At the start of the case, Wayne County Prosecuting Attorney Kym Worthy described the abuse as “extremely alarming” and stated that it would be proven in court.
At trial, weeping jurors watched proof that Ethan Belcher was beaten with a pipe, a fly swatter, and a belt before being put to a freezing basement, leaving him with stunning injuries all over his body that he died from, according to the Detroit News.
Child victim testimonies apparently placed guilt for the abuse on both parents, and text evidence between the two was damning.
In one, Hamilton told Shelton, “If I try to whoop their a—- I will LEGIT KILL THEM and then I’ll go to f—ing jail” before deliberately using cold water to beat her children in the basement with freezing temperatures, according to the complaint. According to the report, prosecutors also showed video of Hamilton saying Ethan on one occasion, “I’m tired of you.” “You’re never coming up (from the basement).”
In another text to Shelton, the mother reportedly wrote, “F— it. “I beat the s— out of them.”
Hamilton and Shelton are now facing the potential of spending their lives in prison.
Ethan’s extended family members have long claimed that “multiple CPS reports” were filed “over the years,” but “each time, the children were allowed right back into this abusive and neglectful home.”