BRENTWOOD, N.H. — A series of videos taken days before a 3-year-old brain-injured boy was hospitalized start with the Plaistow toddler stumbling and saying he has a “tummy ache” and end with him curled up in the bathtub being yelled at and ordered to stop having seizures.
Jessica Linscott took the videos in November 2012, shortly before leaving her son at a hospital and fleeing with Roland Dow to Florida, where they were arrested two weeks later at a theme park. Her son, James Nicholson, was treated for a severe brain injury and burns on his wrist and fingers.
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Linscott covered her face and cried Thursday as the videos were shown to jurors at Dow’s trial on assault and other charges.
She said she showed the video to doctors because she knew something was wrong with her son, but thought he was purposefully having what she called “autistic fits.”
Linscott, who is serving 2½ to 7 years in prison for child endangerment and witness tampering, says Dow physically and mentally abused her and treated her son “worse than a dog you don’t want.” She said Dow struck James in the head when he had seizures, and admitted she did not try to comfort her child.
“I allowed a lot of things to happen that I shouldn’t have let happen. I was being a horrific parent,” she said. “I was neglecting my son’s needs. I was putting Roland first and letting him take control of every situation.”
It’s unclear how much James, who is living with Linscott’s mother, has recovered from his injuries, but prosecutors have said they are considering having him testify at the trial.
Linscott said she let Dow abuse and terrify James in part because she feared he would do something worse if she left him.
Dow hated James and punished him at the slightest provocation, she said. If James soiled his clothes, Dow would make him go in the shower to rinse off, holding him down and spraying him with water. Sometimes, the frantic toddler fell in the tub and got hurt as he struggled, she said.
“No matter what my son was doing, he was doing it wrong,” she said of how Dow treated him. “My son couldn’t color the right way, he couldn’t eat the right way, he couldn’t talk the right way.”
Linscott admitted that she, too, put her son in the shower but said she was more gentle. She also admitted spanking James, saying if she didn’t, Dow would do it “and it would be a lot worse.”
Dow’s defense attorneys say Linscott has a history of falsely accusing others when she feels threatened. She testified that she lied to doctors and police before fleeing to Florida, but told the truth when a detective questioned her about the black eye Dow gave her.
Linscott said she was afraid to take her son and leave Dow because he had hit her, ripped out her hair, repeatedly choked her and once threw her down the stairs. While she left for three days when he threatened to slit her throat, she said she returned after he said he would kill himself.
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