A U.S. woman who poured hot sauce into her adopted Russian son’s mouth has been given a 180-day suspended jail sentence and a $2,500 suspended fine by a U.S. district court in Alaska.
Jessica Beagley will not go to jail or be fined unless she breaks the conditions of her three-year probation, District Court Judge David Wallace ruled on Monday, the Anchorage Daily News paper reported.
The Anchorage mom must also continue to attend counseling sessions with her adopted 7-year-old son, Daniil Bukharov (aka Chris Beagley).
Last year, a U.S. TV show broadcast a video footage of Beagley pouring hot sauce into her son’s mouth and forcing him into a cold shower.
The court in Alaska said Beagley had recorded the video because she wanted to get on the Doctor Phil TV show.
Her lawyer argued that the Beagleys provided the boy and his twin brother, adopted from Russia in 2008, “a loving home and reached out to producers of the television show to gain help for persistent behavioral problems.”
Beagley and her husband Gary have four biological children.
Russia suspended adoptions by U.S. families after a Tennessee woman sent her 7-year-old adoptive son back to Russia last year. He was put on a plane on his own with a note from the woman saying she did not want him as he was “psychotic.”
Russia’s children rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said in January that 17 Russian children have died in the United States as a result of child abuse since the adoptions began more than 15 years ago.
The latest official figures show that about 60,000 children born in Russia have been adopted by families in the United States.