Woman Gets 2 Life Terms For Raping Infant Daughter

CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — A judge sentenced a Missouri woman to consecutive life prison terms for sexually assaulting her infant daughter along with a California man she met online. Attorneys for 22-year-old Tessa Vanvlerah, of Ballwin, failed to persuade St. Louis County Circuit Judge Colleen Dolan to sentence their client Monday only to probation, because they argue that a psychological disorder is largely to blame for her crimes, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported ( ). Vanvlerah pleaded guilty in January to incest, statutory sodomy and statutory rape in the attacks against her daughter, who is 3 but who was 5 months old when the pair first attacked her.

The woman who fostered and then adopted the girl said initially, the girl would scream when anyone bathed her or changed her diaper. She still has night terrors and asks at each bedtime to make sure nobody else comes into the home. However, she said the girl is improving day by day and “is no longer Tessa’s plaything and she is no longer Tessa’s child.” Vanvlerah was arrested in 2010 following the arrest of 49-year-old Kenneth Kyle, a California State University East Bay professor, on child pornography charges. Along with hundreds of child porn images on Kyle’s computers, investigators found information that led them to the St. Louis area, where Kyle had visited Vanvlerah four times in five months since meeting online. During those visits, prosecutors say the pair had sex with the girl and each other at various hotels.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/woman-gets-2-life-terms-for-raping-infant-daughter/