MAGNA, Utah — Three children all under the age of 10 years old faced prolonged and horrific child abuse at the hands of a Magna couple, according to the Salt Lake County District Attorneys Office.
WATCH: Kearns parents allegedly locked up 13-year-old boy in makeshift cell for 24 hours
The mother of the children, Sarah Louise Sorensen, 27, and her boyfriend, Kristopher Riley North, 34, have been charged with 29 counts of alleged child abuse for activity that had been ongoing since 2020.
Some of the incidents included pulling the hair from the head of one of the children, hitting them to the point of causing one boy to lose consciousness and pointing a gun at another and threatening to shoot him.
According to the arrest documents, the Unified Police Department responded to the Magna home on August 21 after a report claimed North had hit Sorensen's 6-year-old son and tried to strangle the boy. The responding officer noticed red marks on the child's neck, scratches on his body, as well as severe bruising and open wounds.
That day, all three of Sorensen's children were transported to the hospital.
Sorensen later told a detective that North had become angry with her son for using the door handle to get out of their truck when the family had arrived home from an appointment. North then told the 6-year-old to "get in a pushup position" and made him do exercises. When the child did not perform the pushups correctly, police said North kicked him twice.
When the boy didn't answer North's questions by using "sir" or "yes, sir," or gave answers that North didn't find acceptable, he was constantly slapped with an open hand. Becoming more agitated, North allegedly grabbed the child by the shirt and continued slapping him before grabbing the boy with both hands, pushing his thumbs into the side of his neck and "chocked" him, the report stated.
WATCH:
Sorensen claimed that the day before the incident, North had slapped her 9-year-old child multiple times. She claimed that in June, North had punched the 6-year-old with a closed fist, forcing the boy to fall back and hit his head on a chair, causing him to lose consciousness.
After he had lost consciousness, Sorensen believed her son had suffered a concussion as "he was not speaking clearly, could not stand up on his own, and his pupils were dilated differently."
Despite noticing those symptoms, Sorensen did not take her child to the hospital.
During another alleged abusive episode, North punched the 8-year-old child, leaving him with black eyes, before he pulled hair from their head, leaving bald spots.
The 8-year-old also said had been doing something in the middle of the night when North came down with a gun and said he was going to shoot him.
Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said Sorensen did not report the alleged child abuse during the years it was taking place.
North told detectives that he "likes to grab [the children] on the back of their neck and show them where they're supposed to be and what they're supposed to do," and while he admitted to grabbing the kids by the front of the neck, "if they just breathe through their nose, they would be fine."
"This is preventable and tragic and should never have happened in the first place," said Laurieann Thorpe, Executive Director of Prevent Child Abuse Utah.
The charges come one day after the parents of a 13-year-old Kearns boy were arrested after they allegedly locked the child in a makeshift cell for up to 24 hours at a time.
Thorpe says there have been more violent child abuse situations recently, and sometimes it's because parents need help.
"Families who are in high stress situations and parents who cant cope, and make really bad choices as a result," she shared.
The Utah Department of Child and Family Services has multiple resources to help prevent child abuse and neglect because the incidents can harm a child for their entire life, and in the Magna case, the children might have helplessly watched their siblings get hurt.
"I think it's important for parents to recognize that its okay to need help," Thorpe said. "We actually have some research out of Utah that says that parents feel like it isn't okay to ask for help, that they shouldn't need help, which is just not true.
"We all need help."
