photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

The Douglas County Judicial and Law Enforcement Center is pictured in March of 2022. The center houses the Douglas County District Court and other county services.

A Lawrence woman was ordered to stand trial on Tuesday for felony child abuse after the court reviewed a video taken by a foster child of alleged violence by the woman against another child.

The woman, Patricia Anne Fisher, 54, is charged in Douglas County District Court with one felony count of child abuse by torturing or cruelly punishing a child and one misdemeanor count of violating a protective order, according to charging documents. The abuse charge relates to an incident on or about March 29, and the violation charge is alleged to have occurred on Sept. 8.

Fisher was arrested in connection with the abuse charge on June 21 and released on a $20,000 surety bond shortly after her arrest, according to the jail booking log.

At a preliminary hearing on Tuesday, Lawrence Police Detective Evan Curtis testified that the alleged abuse against a teen was caught on camera by a younger child who lived in Fisher’s house at the time of the incident in March but had since moved to another foster home. There, the child showed her new foster parent a video of Fisher and another child in the home engaging in a physical altercation. Upon seeing the video, the new foster parent called the police.

The video, played in court, begins with a recording device under a cover or sheet with the sound of loud screaming and a female voice saying “it hurts” and Fisher saying “I don’t really care” and “Shut your mouth. You started it.”

The video continues with more screaming and Fisher telling the teen, whom Curtis identified as the other female voice, that Fisher had “started talking peacefully,” but then additional arguing followed.

The person recording the video then peeks out from the cover and around a corner, showing Fisher’s back confronting the teen in the kitchen. Fisher can then be seen forcefully pushing the teen into the wall before hitting the teen in the head and then putting both of her hands near the teen’s neck and holding her against the wall.

The teen continues to scream, saying “let go, let go, let go.”

The video stops briefly, then resumes, showing the child who took the video looking frightened as the yelling in the background continues. The child taking the video gives the camera a thumbs down.

The video stops again and resumes with a shot of the kitchen, where it appears Fisher grabbed the teen, slammed her head into a table as she wrestled her to the ground and held her down.

While holding the teen down, Fisher can be heard chastising her for using a Sharpie marker because the teen “decided to not follow the rules about Sharpies.”

The video stops again and the next thing recorded is the child putting the recording device into her backpack, and a conversation can be heard about getting the child to school that day.

Curtis said that after he reviewed the video he contacted the teen at her school. He said the teen initially did not know why police would contact her but then confirmed that she and Fisher did have a fight and that she did not report it out of fear of being removed from Fisher’s home.

Curtis said the teen described Fisher as hitting her in the head, pulling her hair, biting her on the face and hand and wrestling her to the ground. The teen said the bite on her hand was bleeding on the day of the incident. Curtis said he saw possible evidence of a bite mark on the girl’s cheek during the interview.

Curtis later interviewed Fisher, who also confirmed that she and the teen had fought, he said.

Chief Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Tatum asked Curtis if Fisher had an excuse for engaging in “physical combat” with a child.

Curtis said that Fisher claimed the fight was a result of a few days of tension between her and the teen. Curtis said Fisher acknowledged that she bit the teen but only did so after the teen had bitten her. She denied choking the teen and said that she held the teen around the neck to prevent the teen from biting her more. Fisher admitted to striking the child on the top of the head out of frustration, he said.

After Curtis’ testimony, Tatum asked Judge Amy Hanley to bind Fisher over on the felony charge and said that child abuse cases commonly involve excessive spanking or something similar.

“This is not that. We see her slap her, then choke her and wrestle her to the ground. Slamming a child’s head into a table is never appropriate,” Tatum said.

Fisher’s attorney, Michael Clarke, objected to Tatum saying that Fisher choked the teen since there was no direct testimony that the teen’s airway was blocked. He also objected to the abuse charge itself since the felony charge requires an abuser to have acted in a torturous or cruel way.

He said cruelty is defined in case law as a “pitiless act intended to cause great harm” and is “intended to give pleasure to the abuser,” which he said was not the case with the altercation between Fisher and the teen.

“There was clearly a conflict but no evidence of torture,” Clarke said.

Hanley ordered Fisher to stand trial on the abuse charge March 4, 2024, with the misdemeanor charge to be addressed after the trial.