Mother who placed child in oven not guilty by reason of insanity

In January a mother of five children called the police to ask them to come and get her. In the call to 911 she said she was harming her children.

Reyna Valentino from Hamtramck Michigan has been found not guilty by reason of insanity of the abuse of two of her five children.

When the father went to pick up two boys from school Valentino took a heated nail or screw driver and burned the 4-year-old girl’s lower eyelid. She then put the little girl in the oven that had been turned on. Her back had sear lines on it from the rack. A five year-old said she had been hit with a crowbar.

The mother was facing charges of torture and child abuse.

According to Defense attorney Raymond Cassar the 40-year-old mother, Reyna Valentino, was found not guilty as part of an agreement with Wayne County prosecutors.

She will likely be treated in the Center for Forensic Psychiatry indefinitely.

According to Cassar Valentino has paranoid schizophrenia but stopped taking her medication because she couldn’t afford it. “She has had an over 12-year history of significant mental illness, which included numerous psychiatric hospital hospitalizations,” Wayne County Assistant Prosecutor Maria Miller said. Home alone with the girl, Valentino went to a neighbor’s home and asked her to call police after the incident.

There is a companion child protective proceeding in Wayne County in which both parents are respondents. The children are now in foster care.  Valentino’s husband, Randy Valentino, also lost custody of all three children for failing to protect them in light of their mother’s mental illness.  Permanent placement proceedings are pending for the three children.

© 2009, Melinda Deel. All rights reserved.