CENTENNIAL — When one of the children living in the Aaron Thompson home got bad grades, she sometimes was ordered to strip naked, then one of the other children tied her up to a pole in the basement with scarves and she would prepare for her punishment.
“We would get a whuppin’ right there,” the girl, who turns 15 today, testified Monday in Thomp son’s trial in Arapahoe County District Court.
She said her mother, Shelley Lowe, told Thomp son how many times to smack them. Sometimes Lowe would order another kid to bring her and Thompson something to drink while the beatings took place.
Thompson faces 60 counts in the death of his daughter, Aarone, and for the abuse of the seven other children living in their Aurora home. Thomp son reported Aarone missing Nov. 14, 2005. She would have been almost 7 years old at the time but police think Aarone died two years earlier.
Lowe died in May 2006.
Prosecutors shifted their tactics Monday to the alleged abuse of the other children at the home.
The girl, who is Lowe’s biological daughter, would have been 11 when Thompson said Aarone ran away over a cookie.
She said beatings at the home happened almost daily. Sometimes they were hit with a belt, electrical cord or a television cable — or worse.
One time, said the girl, Lowe hit her in the head with a baseball bat.
“She didn’t use the big side of the bat,” the girl said.
When asked by prosecutor Bob Chappell what the girl had done to deserve such a punishment, she said she couldn’t exactly remember.
“All I know is it was something small,” she said.
She spoke matter-of-factly as she recalled the beatings the children endured.
She said they got in trouble for bad grades, not doing their chores and even eating food that was specifically for Thomp son and Lowe. Lowe and Thompson ate brand names, the girl said, while the children got generic foods.
The kids were required to wash all their clothes and prepare an outfit for each day of the coming school week before they went to bed Sunday nights.
Sometimes Lowe and Thompson forced them to stand on the brick base of the fireplace facing the wall for 24 hours or longer, with breaks only to do chores, go to the bathroom or go to school.
Other times, Lowe hit them with the belt on the palms of their hands, leaving welts and turning them purple. The teen said the children hid their hands at school so their parents would not get in trouble.
Andrea Woods, a case worker for the Arapahoe County Department of Human Services, testified that one of Lowe’s sons who was 14 when Aarone was reported missing, told her they were hit 15 to 20 times on their hands.
Some cried, some flinched, and some, like his sister who testified Monday, took it like a soldier, Woods said Lowe’s son told her.
Carlos Illescas: 303-954-1175 or cillescas@denverpost.com
