STEPMOM ARRESTED ON ABUSE CHARGES

Prosecutors charged a 12-year-old rural Cape Girardeau boy's stepmother with two counts of domestic assault and one count each of child abuse and child endangerment Wednesday, weeks after filing similar charges against the boy's father.

Jennifer Schwepker, 23, was arrested and taken to the county jail. Eric Schwepker, 30, was arrested in early February after a driver noticed the boy walking alone on a county road on Feb. 2 and deposited him with authorities.

Cape Girardeau County Sheriff's Department reports reveal the boy endured more injuries at age 12 than some people accrue in a lifetime including kicks, human bites, and strikes from a baseball bat and hammer.

Jennifer Schwepker faces a maximum prison sentence of 28 years for reportedly pushing the boy into the kitchen counter hard enough to cut his head, kicking him in the genitals, choking him and allowing her husband to strike the boy's toes repeatedly with a hammer while she was in the same room.

The prosecuting attorney also amended Eric Schwepker's charges to three counts of child abuse and one count of domestic assault. He was released from the county jail after his parents posted $25,000 bond and is scheduled for a preliminary court hearing on Monday. He is not to leave Missouri or to have unsupervised contact with his son.

Should Jennifer Schwepker also be able to post bond, the prosecutor has asked that her contact with the boy be restricted.

The 12-year-old was placed in temporary foster care following the arrest of his father.

Family members say he was beaten for years, but their efforts to stop the abuse weren't successful. Faye Schreiner of Cape County, the boy's aunt, said she has seen adult human bite wounds on the boy.

"I definitely was out there and saw bites on his little arm. They said a baby bit him, but the bite marks were too big to be a baby's bite marks," she said.

She said family members previously reported the abuse, but Sheriff John Jordan said he has no record of Schreiner calling the department. He said his deputies pursue such reports.

The Missouri Department of Social Services declined to comment on whether the agency ever received tips that the boy was being abused.

The boy's maternal grandmother, Karen Bowers, said whenever school personnel would become suspicious of the boy's wounds, the boy would be moved to a different school.

Andrea Seabaugh, principal of St. Ambrose Grade School in Chaffee, Mo. -- where the boy reportedly attended classes for at least two years -- declined to comment.

Investigators reportedly seized a red aluminum baseball bat, two claw hammers, a leather belt, and lengths of rope from the Schwepker residence on County Road 205.