Judge finds Northampton woman guilty of reckless endangerment in medical child abuse case
NORTHAMPTON – A criminal case involving the poisoning and medical child abuse of a 7-year-old Northampton child by her caregivers was resolved Wednesday, June 30, 2021, in Hampshire Superior Court when Julie Gordon, formerly Julie Conley, 39, of Northampton, was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of reckless endangerment of a child. Hampshire Superior Court Judge Richard Carey sentenced her to probation until September 2023.
Gordon’s conviction was the culmination of an investigation that began in April 2015, after the child was admitted to Yale New Haven Hospital in Connecticut with life-threatening abdominal injuries. Christopher Conley, Julie Gordon’s former husband and codefendant, was charged with attempted murder after he admitted injecting a caustic substance into the victim’s abdomen in an attempt to kill her. In February 2020, Christopher was sentenced to 16-18 years in prison after a Hampshire Superior Court Jury found him guilty, following a three-week trial, of a single count of attempted murder, assault and battery on a child by means of a dangerous weapon (opioids) and assault and battery on a child causing substantial bodily injury.
During Wednesday’s hearing, lead prosecutor Linda Pisano, Chief of the Northwestern District Attorney’s Child Abuse Unit, detailed the facts uncovered during the investigation into the victim’s poisoning. Pisano described how on April 15, 2015, the victim was admitted to the hospital for the third time to be treated for injuries to her bladder and intestines. Child abuse pediatricians and other medical providers later determined her injuries had been caused by a caustic chemical intentionally introduced into her cecostomy tube. The child’s injuries led to a seven-hour surgery that saved the child’s life and a second surgery two weeks later that identified a hole in the bladder caused by a chemical burn.
Those events triggered investigations by the Department of Children and Families as well as a criminal investigation by Northampton Police and State Police assigned to the Northwestern District Attorney’s office. Investigations uncovered voluminous medical records which showed that the child had suffered a long-running series of supposed physical ailments leading to increasingly complex medical interventions. During that time, Julie Gordon, the child’s main caretaker, misrepresented the victim’s medical condition and consented to surgical procedures she knew carried the risk of scarring and impairment of bodily functions. “We feel it is abundantly clear that the defendant was in the driver’s seat when it came to the victim’s medical care,” said First Assistant District Attorney Steven E. Gagne, who prosecuted the case with Pisano.
Furthermore, Pisano said in court, when the child was later placed in foster care, all of her supposed symptoms and ailments cleared up. “From this point forward, her health improved markedly,” Pisano said.
“Today’s plea holds the defendant publicly accountable for her disturbing conduct, while providing some measure of closure, healing and justice for the victim,” Gagne said after the disposition of the case. In court, he said: “This disposition allows the victim and her family to close this particular chapter and move on with their lives.”
Gordon appeared at today’s plea hearing via Zoom technology, along with her defense attorneys Bonnie Allen and Thomas Estes, and Rachel Weber, who was present in the courtroom. After Pisano recited the facts the Commonwealth would present if the case went to trial, Gordon tendered a “nolo contendere” plea in which she admitted the evidence against her was sufficient to convict her if the case went to trial. When asked by Judge Carey about her plea, Gordon said she understood that the Commonwealth had enough evidence to convict her, although she maintained her innocence. “I choose to plead nolo contendere while maintaining my innocence,” she said.
The victim’s adopted older sister read a prepared statement to Carey, in which she described the consequences her sister continues to face, emotionally and physically, after the years of medical abuse and unnecessary medical procedures but declared that her sister was still “the strongest person I know.”
Judge Carey accepted the plea and imposed the sentence jointly recommended by the defense and the Commonwealth, which included conditions of probation that Gordon have no contact with the victim, no unsupervised contact with any child under the age of 16, and no employment involving unsupervised contact with children. Following the plea, the Commonwealth dismissed two felony charges originally returned by the Hampshire Grand Jury in 2015.