A Facebook video led to the arrest of a Milwaukee mother accused of abusing her then nine-year-old son with a belt.
The video was shot last year, but only recently posted. When many people saw it they called police and TODAY'S TMJ4.
People scrolling through a private Milwaukee Facebook group last week were confronted with a disturbing video. It's so graphic all we can show you is a woman holding a belt.
She swings it more than 40 times, hitting her half naked son with "such force that he could not stand up" according to the criminal complaint.
At one point she sits on the 9-year-old, his face pressed against the bed as he is "crying, screaming and pleading for her to stop."
When Facebook users saw it they reached out to police and us. Police say the incident is from a year ago and that Jealissa McKinney-Williams is the woman swinging the belt.
She admitted to police she was disciplining her child and "that she has been doing this to her sons for over a year and sees nothing wrong with it."
Police say they have almost no information about the boy, and other children in the house, because they were... "not in school and had not been seen by medical providers."
Along with child abuse, McKinney-Williams is also charged with obstructing an officer for not telling police her children were at her neighbor's home. Tuesday, that neighbor, Leticia Branch, defended McKinney-Williams.
"I saw the video. I'm not saying what she did was right. That's not what I'm saying," Branch said. "She was angry and reacted out of anger. She's not this crazy person, this bad mother."
But according to a doctor, she found over 40 looped and linear injuries on the little boy's body indicating "definite/diagnostic for abuse."
According to a criminal complaint, the boy said his older brother was also beaten with a belt. Two younger kids denied being abused.
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