Crime & Safety

Baby Scratcher Sentenced for Violating Probation

Lisa Hench, a former La Jolla real estate agent, was sentenced to jail on Friday.

A former La Jolla real estate agent who mysteriously scratched and pinched eight babies after befriending their mothers was sentenced on Friday to a two-year jail term after violating her probation.

Lisa Hench, 45, was arrested last month when she failed to enroll in a substance abuse program and tested positive for drugs three times, said Deputy District Attorney Nicole Rooney.

The defendant, a mother of three, had been out of custody while she appealed her original sentence handed down in January by Superior Court Judge Michael Smyth.

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On Friday, Smyth imposed the two years in county jail when Hench was found to be in violation of probation and abandoned her appeal, Rooney said.   

In January, the judge said there was no discernable reason why Hench injured the eight children, calling the behavior “predatory in nature.”   

Find out what's happening in La Jollawith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Hench pleaded guilty last December to eight misdemeanor counts of corporal injury on a child. Her victims were injured, none significantly, at different locations over a four-month period in the fall of 2009, prosecutors said. They ranged in age from 3 months to 19 months.

– City News Service


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