Divorce Settlement Gone Bad
Over the years there have been many divorce and child custody disputes, but this one is by far one of the more moving stories. In Salt Lake City, Utah, a mother and stepfather were charged with beating and disfiguring a body of their four year old boy. Nathanael and Stephanie Sloop face charges of desecration of a corpse, felony child abuse and obstruction of justice, according to the police on the scene. Both Sloop's are detained in jail. Stephanie Sloop did not have an attorney, and Nathanael Sloop had been represented by a criminal lawyer in previous cases. It seems he had prior experience.
The boy's biological had been granted to share custody of Ethan, after a Fort Lauderdale divorce attorney had finalized a divorce. Joe G. Stacy in Virginia, the father, wrote a petition that the mother was unstable and abandoned the child. The divorce settlement was made finalized and approved by the Judge Maura T. Smith of the Ninth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida in Orlando. It was uncontested.
Stephanie's house fell into foreclosure. She then remarried eight days after her divorce. The Sloops locked Ethan, at that point heavily assaulted and beaten, in his bedroom to go to their marriage ceremony. Nathanael Sloop acknowledged beating the boy for days before his death and Stephanie Sloop did nothing to stop it. He used a hammer to disfigure Ethan's face and teeth to make ti harder for identification purposes. This is truly a tragic story. Perhaps an experienced criminal defense lawyer in Los Angeles or somewhere else in the United States can bring Ethan justice.
