JESSICA BEAGLEY

Jessica Beagley

Jessica Beagley

Jessica Beagley, the 36-year-old Alaska mother who forced her 7-year-old son to ingest hot sauce and take a cold shower as punishment for allegedly lying about various transgressions at school, has been convicted of misdemeanor child abuse. Beagley's case has stirred up a debate about when parental discipline crosses the line into illegality. She was charged with a crime after she sent a video of the hot sauce/cold shower punishment to the Dr. Phil show and later appeared on the program. The mother of six argued in court that she had to resort to a serious punishment method, because her son, adopted from Russia, suffered from a disorder that made him prone to misbehave.

After deliberating for a day, the jury convicted Beagley of misdemeanor child abuse, the Anchorage Daily News reports. She faces up to a year in prison and is due to be sentenced Monday. Beagley stood blank-faced as the verdict was read, according to the Daily News. She did not respond to questions as she left the courtroom with her husband Gary, an Anchorage police officer. (Barringer, 2010).

Pleading for leniency and speaking haltingly, Beagley told the judge: My most important job in this life is of being a mother. I would ask that the court would allow me to be that. To be that mother that I would like to be, to not disrupt the lives of my children any more than has been already.

Tearfully, she also said, as seen in a clip from the courtroom aired on NBC, Please know that everything that has been said and done was in the best interest of my children, because I love them.

Beagley initially contacted the Dr. Phil show after seeing a segment in April 2009 called Angry Moms. A year and a half later, she was contacted by the show and asked if she was still angry (Barringer, 2010).

This little boy was adopted from Russia, where this case has attracted attention because of growing concern about adopted children from that country facing abuse in the United States. Beagley and her husband had struggled with the boy, who was adopted at age 5 along with his twin brother from an orphanage in Magadan, Russia. Both boys have since been diagnosed with an emotional disorder stemming from their difficult early years in Russia and are now in long-term therapy (Berenson, 2006).

Her response was to send a tape of her yelling at her kids, but the show reportedly said it needed to see her punishing her children. That's when she reputedly had her 10-year-old daughter (the Beagleys have six children) videotape the incidents with the hot sauce and cold shower.

The Beagley son in the tape, Kristoff, was adopted from Russia with his twin brother in 2008. The boy is now teased in school over the incident, which was first aired on Dr. Phil in November 2010.

Jessica Beagley's husband, Gary, is an Anchorage police officer. He defended his wife, saying that Kristoff has a special problem - Reactive Attachment Disorder - ...