Missouri foster mom trades teen for monkey, gets probation

A Missouri foster mother has escaped being sentenced to prison after she allegedly traded a child under her care for a monkey. The judge also revoked her foster care license during the hearing, criticizing the state for allowing her to keep it as long as she did.

During the Thursday hearing, Lincoln County Judge Thomas Frawley sentenced 70-year-old Brenda Deutsch to a suspended seven-year prison sentence for child endangerment. If she stays out of trouble for her three years of probation, she will not go to prison, per Fox 2.

Brina Johnson, Deutsch’s biological daughter, and a former foster child of Deutsch both spoke out in the hearing. A minor was present in the courtroom, which Johnson said was the one traded for the monkey. She said of her mother, “That’s what she did; she had at least seven monkeys. That’s just her thing. But she wasn’t any nicer to those monkeys than she was to a child.”

Deutsch was arrested in April after authorities investigated allegations that she sent the foster child in question, who is now 17, to a home in Texas that Deutsch admitted in court she knew nothing about.

The investigation began after Deutsch sought permission to take the girl to Texas to visit a friend. Five days later, an anonymous caller told the Missouri Department of Social Services Children’s Division that Deutsch was allegedly physically and mentally abusing the child. Investigators later learned of the allegation that the girl had been traded for an exotic animal and was living in Texas.

Speaking with investigators, the teen said Deutsch had told her Texas friend that they could keep the child, but that Deutsch “will be keeping the check.” The girl was eventually taken into the custody of child protective services in Texas, after a witness told police that the girl had been left in an unsanitary home in the state filled with exotic animals.

The girl said she suffered abuse at the hands of Deutsch, with the girl being struck with objects such as shoes and a paddle, and that during one beating, she said she lay on the floor and tried to “soften the strikes to her body.” Deutsch had also once threatened to kill her if “she did not shut up.”

Over her time as a foster caregiver, she had fostered over 200 children. In court, Judge Frawley apologized to Deutsch’s victims and said he was sorry that the system had failed them.