Witness says Haleigh Poutre spoke of hurting herself

(Pool Photo)

Defense attorney Elizabeth L. George and defendant Jason D. Strickland listened to testimony today.

By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff

SPRINGFIELD -- A mental health worker testified today in the child abuse trial of Haleigh Poutre’s stepfather that Haleigh said she sometimes hurt herself and, in some cases, heard voices telling her to do so.

Pam Krzyzek, a clinical case coordinator for Brightside for Families and Children, a mental health agency in Western Massachusetts, said she visited Haleigh’s home once or twice a week in the year before Haleigh suffered her near-fatal head injury in September 2005.

During that time, Krzyzek had extensive discussions with Haleigh and her adoptive mother, Holli Strickland, about the numerous bruises and other injuries on the girl’s body. Krzyzek testified that she understood these wounds were part of a mental disorder that caused Haleigh to hurt herself, even sometimes requiring psychiatric hospitalization.

Krzyzek said Haleigh explained her swollen and injured knees by saying that she had hit herself there with a hammer. Krzyzek went on to say, however, that she had heard that Haleigh later told some friends at a dance studio that it was her adoptive mother who struck her knees with a hammer.

The witness said that in her frequent visits to the home she had little contact with Haleigh’s stepfather, Jason Strickland, the only defendant in this case. Holli Strickland is not on trial because she died in an apparent murder-suicide with her grandmother, shortly after she and her husband were charged with child abuse.

The testimony in Hampden County Superior Court came as the defense began presenting its case. The defense is trying to show that Haleigh was a troubled child with an extensive history of self-injurious behavior that might even had led to her near-fatal head trauma. The defense has also suggested that a baby sitter might have played a role in the injuries that sent Haleigh to a hospital on Sept. 11, 2005.

The baby sitter, Alicia Weiss, 26, watched over Haleigh in the two hours before her comatose and bruised body was brought to Noble Hospital in Westfield. She has testified that Haleigh was motionless in bed during that time, and Weiss had assumed the child was sleeping and sick with the flu, as Haleigh's adoptive mother had told her.

The prosecution had ruled out Weiss as a suspect because its medical expert testified Haleigh's brain injury had to have occurred a day earlier, around the afternoon of Sept. 10, 2005, based on her diagnostic test results.

But the defense's medical expert, Dr. Jonathan Arden, a former chief medical examiner in Washington, D.C., told jurors this morning that Haleigh's brain injury could have occurred as early as two or three hours before the girl arrived at the hospital, putting the alleged injury in the potential time frame of Weiss's baby-sitting that day.

"It could have happened as little as two or three hours before presentation," said Arden, who now runs his own forensic consulting business and frequently testifies in criminal and civil cases. Arden also differed from the prosecution's medical witness by saying that Haleigh could have suffered such a severe injury to her brain by falling down the stairs. The government's witness, Dr. Richard Hicks, a radiologist at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, had testified that the 11-year-old girl's head injury had to be from something similar to a "high-velocity motor vehicle accident," not a fall down a flight of stairs.

The stairways in the Strickland home emerged in testimony from another defense witness today, a former family friend, Stephanie Adams. Adams said she got to know the family when she placed her children in the family day care that Holli Strickland operated out of her home. One day, Adams said, she was talking to Strickland in the home's living room, when she noticed Haleigh on the second floor standing at the top of a set of stairs. Suddenly, Adams said, Haleigh dove down the stairs for no apparent reason.

Adams described it as Haleigh going head first toward the bottom of the stairs, “as if she was sliding into second base.”

Adams went on to say that she rarely encountered Jason Strickland in the home because he was often busy at his job as a car mechanic. She said that she never saw the stepfather mistreat Haleigh and, in fact, “Jason seemed to have a heart for Haleigh.”

The stepfather is expected to take the stand, possibly Monday, to defend himself against charges that he had anything to do with Haleigh’s injury.

Haleigh almost died from her head injuries when the state nearly pulled her life support, triggering a national end-of-life controversy. The girl, now 14, has recovered to the point where she can feed herself, write her name, and attends a day school in a Brighton rehabilitation center.

Patricia Wen can be reached at wen@globe.com.

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