Gwinnett County mother gets 40 years for abuse, torture

And all new at five, a Lilburn mother will spend decades in prison. Good evening. Thanks for joining us. I'm Tom Haynes. I'm Courtney Bryant. A Gwinnett County jury has convicted her on a number of charges for abusing her nine-year-old daughter. Fox 5's Kevin Stewart is at the Gwinnett County Justice Center with the story. Kevin? Yeah, this mom was arrested back in the summertime last summer, and a jury, after about four hours of deliberations, came back with a guilty verdict. This is what a mother did, not to a stranger, but to her own child, only nine years old. Legal terms call it battery abuse. A doctor got on the witness stand and called it something else. Child torture. And he looked at the physical abuse as well as the psychological abuse. And then. Part of that was the medical neglect. A series of crimes that went on behind these closed doors for years. We found photographs in the mother's phone that showed her as young as probably five or six with a black eye. A jury found Christy Cooley guilty of battery and child cruelty charges. The jury recommended 242 years in prison. The judge sentenced her to serve 40. She may not ever walk out of the prison. The child's stepfather died of congestive heart failure tied to obesity before ever facing a jury. This survivor is a middle child and the prosecution says the only one targeted. Was there a motive? Pure evil is the only motive we can think of. DFCS had been involved with the child's family when she was a toddler. But there was pretty much no follow-up. According to assistant DA Dallas Cox, an online teacher. They have to have the children come in every so often. Is the person who spotted the signs and alerted authorities. Our office put together our resource guide to help people find help. And basically, if there was a phone call to anyone in the Gwinnett County district and this family needed help, they would have found it. All right. And that survivor of this torture, she's getting help right now. We understand she is doing better and is in foster care. We're live in Gwinnett County, Kevin Stewart, Fox 5 News. All right, Kevin, thanks.