Myrtle Beach couple charged with abusing daughter loses custody

By Jody Barr
WBTW News 13 Reporter
Published: June 26, 2008

In January, Horry County police arrested a Myrtle Beach couple with assault in the abuse case involving their 5 year old daughter.

County police arrested 35 year old Patricia Eudy and her live-in boyfriend 26 year old Aubrey Johnson and charged the pair with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, inflicting great bodily injury on a child, and child neglect.

At a state department of social services hearing Thursday in Conway, a family court judge decided to separate and place the couple’s five children with three different family members in and around North and South Carolina.

Both Eudy and Johnson await trial on the child abuse charges in jail.

Investigators said sometime in early January, Eudy beat her daughter causing severe injuries, severe enough that the little girl was taken to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston for treatment following the arrests.

In the DSS report obtained by News13 following the arrests, agents said DSS investigators went to the couple’s Myrtle Beach home to investigate child abuse allegations.

Investigators said the child had rope burns to the wrists and ankles and chemical burns from the child’s neck down to below the buttocks; the burns appeared to come from bleach, according to investigators.

The report says the 5 year old girl had several open and bleeding wounds all over her back.

DSS investigators also reported the victim had healed wounds all over her front torso, which investigators believed to be the same type wounds as the ones on the child’s back.

Investigators said Eudy told them the victim in the case had a habit of urinating and defecating in her bed, so Eudy made the child sleep in the bathtub and she made her clean that tub with bleach.

Eudy told investigators she tied the victim’s arms and ankles together with shoelaces because the child would wake during the night and get into the knives in the kitchen.

The report states Eudy admitted she spanked the child with a switch, which DSS investigators reported was more of a stick that a switch.

MUSC doctors diagnosed the child with a dead kidney caused by blunt trauma, second degree chemical burns, and abdomen bubbles, which the report says was caused by blunt force trauma.

In 2005, the state Department of Social Services took custody of Eudy’s five children after police charged her with selling drugs inside her home with her children present.

DSS returned the children to Eudy after she completed court-ordered programs.

A circuit court judge denied Eudy bond on Jan.11, but set bond on Johnson at $125,000.

Eudy and Johnson remain jailed at the J. Reuben Long Detention Center.

No word yet on a trial date on the charges.