Three weeks ago, Courtney Hansche brought her unresponsive 4-year-old daughter to St. John's Hospital in Owasso. She told authorities that she had arrived home to find her 4 daughter Jaydenn unconscious in their Ramona home in rural Washington County. Medical personnel notified the Washington County Sheriff's Department about the unresponsive child, and a short time later, the girl was pronounced dead. Deputies began investigating the girl's death as a homicide.
Now, nearly a month later, authorities have made two arrests in connection with Jaydenn's death: the girl's mother and her mother's boyfriend.
Courtney Hansche, 26, is held on complaints of first degree murder, first degree rape by instrumentation, child abuse, and child neglect. Her boyfriend,Michael Andrew Nordbye, 27, is held on charges of first degree murder, first degree rape by instrumentation, and child abuse.
Hansche also has a pending felony embezzlement case filed in August 2014 related to allegations that she embezzled $8,200 from Mo's Corner, a convenience store in Collinsville, Oklahoma.
Nordbye's criminal record includes deferred sentences for public intoxication and misdemeanor drug possession in 2011. Last year, he was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and malicious injury to property. The assault charge was dismissed at the request of the state, and he was given a deferred sentence for malicious injury to property. He is currently on probation for that offense.
Neither embezzlement nor destruction of property seem to predicate the brutal allegations against Hansche and Nordbye. While neither has been formally charged as of this writing, the crimes on which they are held are each punishable by life in prison.
Currently, Hansche and Nordbye are held on the same criminal complaints, with the exception of a child neglect complaint the mother faces that her boyfriend does not. It will be interesting to note whether formal charges deviate from the arrest charges. Under Oklahoma law, both child abuse and enabling child abuse carry the same penalties. Enabling child abuse is a "failure to protect" law that holds a parent responsible if he or she leaves the child in the care of someone known to be abusive, or someone he or she should have reasonably known was abusive.
This means that a parent--often a mother--who leaves the child with an abusive caregiver--often the mother's boyfriend or spouse--faces life in prison for enabling child abuse, even if he or she never used violence or physical force against the child. There is much controversy about "failure to protect" laws and how they often unfairly prosecute victims of domestic violence who feel unable to leave an abusive relationship. Read more about women who receive harsher penalties than their abusers here.
