Attorneys for a McAlester woman found guilty of abusing a 5-year-old boy investigators said looked like “a 75-year-old man” when examined at the hospital are asking a federal judge to sentence the woman Wednesday to time served.
Paula Amber Chisholm, 38, was indicted in the Eastern District of Oklahoma in 2021 on charges of child abuse in Indian Country and child neglect in Indian Country.
A federal jury deliberated for more than four hours before finding Chisholm guilty on the abuse charge during a January 2023 trial. Chisholm was found not guilty on the charge of child neglect in Indian Country.
Records show Chisholm is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday at the federal courthouse in Muskogee. Attorneys for the woman are asking U.S. District Judge Ronald White to sentence their client to time served with three years of supervised release.
A sentencing memorandum filed by the defense states Chisholm has been in pre-trial detention for more than 26 months.
“The requested sentence will achieve specific and general deterrence,” the memorandum states. “No more prison time is needed to convince Ms. Chisholm to remain law-abiding and never to engage in such offense conduct. Even after she is released, the stigma and disabilities that come with a felony Child Abuse conviction will follow her the rest of her life.”
Chisholm was originally charged in December 2019 with child abuse and three charges of child neglect on two separate children with two charges of child neglect later dismissed, according to documents filed in Pittsburg County District Court.
The case was later dismissed due to Chisholm’s Native American status and the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma.
Charges of child abuse and child neglect remain in abeyance in Choctaw Nation District Court with an active warrant of arrest in effect.
An affidavit filed in the case states Chisholm was charged after a 5-year-old boy was transported by ambulance to the McAlester Regional Health Center in early December 2019 from a local school.
When investigators arrived at the emergency room, they were told by school staff that they believed the boy was being abused at home, the affidavit states.
An investigator wrote in his report the boy had bruises all over him with marks on both ears with one “purple like it had been pinched and twisted.”
According to the affidavit, the boy “appeared to be very small and skinny for his age” with the investigator also noting several scratches and bruises under the boy’s thinning hair.
The boy “had the appearance of a 75-year-old man and appeared to be abused, neglected, and malnourished,” the affidavit states.
During a July 2020 preliminary hearing in the state case, a social worker who worked at MRHC at the time of the incident testified the boy originally said nobody hurt him when the room was full of people. But the social worker testified the child became more trusting and later said “Aunt Paula” was the person that hurt him.
Cynthia Sanford, who examined the boy at the Pittsburg County Child Advocacy Center in McAlester, described bruising found on the child’s chest, arms, and back as “open-ended marks,” meaning the boy was hit by an open-ended object or linear object.
With “nobody in the family knowing how the child received the injuries,” Sanford concluded the injuries were “consistent” with child abuse.
“Somebody would have known,” Sanford said.