A Multnomah County jury found a woman guilty of two counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment after the health of a child in her care plummeted.
Jamie Strahm, 40, of The Dalles, took over care of the boy after she started dating his father in 2014. The child at the time was under the age of 4, and Strahm quickly took on the role of primary caretaker, according to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office.
Strahm was convicted Friday of “withholding the necessary and adequate food from the victim” and “withholding the necessary and adequate medical attention from the same victim,” the district attorney’s office said.
The boy’s biological mother was unaware of the mistreatment of her son at the time it occurred, district attorney’s office spokesperson Pat Dooris said in an email.
The child experienced an “unexplained” brain injury in 2015 while under Strahm’s care and had to be hospitalized for several weeks, prosecutors said.
At the time the boy left the hospital, he needed a feeding tube to eat and weighed 45 pounds, putting the child in the 85th percentile for weight at that age, according to the district attorney’s office. Officials said that by 2018, the boy weighed only 40 pounds, the 13th percentile for his age.
Strahm kept the boy intubated for years and claimed that he otherwise couldn’t eat, the district attorney’s office said.
Oregon’s Department of Human Services eventually suspected mistreatment, court records show. In 2016, DHS opened an investigation into Strahm after receiving a tip that she was keeping the boy in his bedroom all day and continuing to give him food through a feeding tube instead of teaching him how to eat, records show.
After April 2018, Strahm stopped taking the boy to many of his planned medical follow-up appointments, prosecutors alleged. Finally, in October 2019, Strahm took the child to an appointment with a dietician.
Alarmed by the boy’s “extremely thin and frail” appearance, the dietician arranged to have him admitted to the hospital the next day, court records state.
The district attorney’s office said doctors found that the child was also suffering from refeeding syndrome, a metabolic disturbance that occurs when a starving person begins eating food again.
Medical professionals made another discovery as well: the child could eat without a tube, contrary to what Strahm had claimed for years, prosecutors said.
The hospital banned Strahm from the building and worked to restore the child’s weight; he was taken into custody by the Department of Human Services shortly afterwards, court records state.
But charges against Strahm didn’t come until much later.
Court records show that in 2020 the boy started opening up about “abuse and torture” he endured, and the Portland Police Bureau ultimately referred the case to the Multnomah County District Attorney’s Office the following year, according to court records.
Prosecutors searched unsealed medical records, unearthing more than 6,200 pages of documents, court records show. On Aug. 15, 2022, the child and his biological mother were called to testify before a grand jury, records state.
About a year later, a grand jury indicted Strahm on five counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment, court records show.
The boy’s father was not charged.
Ted Occhialino, one of Strahm’s attorneys, pointed out in an email that his client had been acquitted on three of the five charges against her.
“Ms. Strahm maintains her innocence and will be appealing the two counts that were convictions,” he said.
Strahm’s sentencing date is set for March 28.
District attorney’s office spokesperson Pat Dooris said in an email that the boy who was formerly in Strahm’s care now lives with his biological mother.
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