Woman Accused Of Punching Her Children

Lawrence Police arrested a Methuen woman for punching her 12-year old daughter several times in the face while they were inside a Laundromat on Broadway.

Police were called to the facility Sunday afternoon by another woman who told police no child deserved to be beaten like that, the police report said.

The witness told police Yessinia Paredes-Morales, 30, of 16 Carlton, St., Methuen, struck the girl several times with a closed fist. Police found the girl playing a video game at the laundry. Her nose appeared puffy and red with a cut across the bridge. Her left eye was puffy and swollen with a dark bruise underneath.

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The manager told police the mother appeared to hit the child seven or eight times while screaming, I’m going to kill you.

Police found a second daughter, age 11, hiding in the back of the store. She told police her mother had hit her, too, and her chin and lip appeared to be swollen.

Paredes-Morales told police her daughter forgot something at home, that this was the way Dominican people discipline their children, and she had done nothing wrong by striking her, the report said.

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