3-year-old boy wet the bed. His mother punished him by burning him with an iron, cops say

A woman faces a charge of child abuse after investigators say she held a hot iron to the bottom of her 3-year-old son’s foot as punishment for wetting the bed, according to the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.

Derby Sanon, 28, was arrested Tuesday and charged with one count of aggravated child abuse. She is being held at the Manatee County jail on a $15,000 bond.

The mother of three — ages 5, 3 and 2 —appeared before Manatee County Judge Charles Sniffen Wednesday morning, and began to sob softly after being told that if she is able to post bond, she would be prohibited from seeing her son. Her three children are not in protective custody, she told Sniffen.

“I left them in my house with their dad,” Sanon said.

Sanon’s lack of criminal history, her job at Sarasota Memorial Hospital and that she goes to school, were all taken into consideration by Sniffen when he set her bond. The State Attorney’s Office argued her bond should be higher based on the severity of the allegation, but the Public Defender’s Office argued it should be reduced given Sanon was not a flight risk and contact with her son was already being prohibited.

“I don’t have anything,” Sanon told the judge when asked about money for bond.

The investigation into the allegations began Tuesday after the boy told a worker at his daycare that his mother had burned him, according to her arrest report. There was a fresh blister on his right foot, which the daycare reported to the sheriff’s office.

On Tuesday night, deputies and child protective investigators went to the family’s home in the 5600 block of 24th Street West in Bayshore Gardens and interviewed Sabon and her son. Sanon told them, according to the sheriff’s office, that her son wet his bed overnight, so she took him into the bathroom, laid him over her leg as she sat on the toilet, turned on the iron, waited for it to get hot and touched it to the bottom of his foot as a scare tactic and form of punishment.

“She said that she knows it was a bad idea,” deputy Matthew Hostetler wrote in the arrest report.

Sanon also claimed to not know the burn had blistered, but the arresting deputy noted it was the size of a baseball.

“The blister was swollen and red, and the victim was having trouble walking while on scene,” the deputy wrote.

The case remains under investigation by the sheriff’s office’s Child Protective Investigative Division, which handles all child welfare case for the Florida Department of Children and Families in Manatee County.

This story was originally published June 28, 2017 at 1:24 PM with the headline "3-year-old boy wet the bed. His mother punished him by burning him with an iron, cops say."