A 27-year-old woman in South Carolina has been sentenced to decades in prison for the severe physical and emotional abuse of her 8-year-old stepdaughter, which included forcing the child to consume animal feces and falsely giving her laxatives disguised as candy gummies.

Seventh Judicial Circuit Judge Grace Gilchrist Knie delivered a sentence of 35 years in a state correctional facility to Tenika Draper, as revealed by court documents reviewed by Law&Crime.

Draper received the sentence after admitting guilt to 20 charges of unlawful child neglect and two charges of obstructing justice. After her prison term, she is required to undergo an additional five years of supervised probation.

The legal proceedings for Draper’s three co-accused — Ian Tatro, Trina Draper, and Ryan Dezotelle — are ongoing. Ian Tatro is identified as the child’s father, Trina Draper as the step-grandmother, and Ryan Dezotelle as the step-uncle.

The Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office stated that authorities visited a home in Wellford on September 2, 2022, following a request from the Department of Social Services to aid in a child abuse enquiry. An anonymous report had alerted the child welfare agency to the suspected abuse.

“Upon reaching the scene, deputies learned from the DSS caseworker that she had visited the house multiple times previously to conduct investigations, but each time the adults had hidden the child from view,” explained the sheriff’s office.

Upon arriving at the home, deputies found four adults and four children. Deputies said the oldest child had “a noticeable limp and temporary tattoos covering multiple visible bruises on both legs.”

The family members allegedly explained to deputies, in separate interviews, that they had recently moved down south from Vermont, Columbia NBC/CW affiliate WIS reported

The stepmother allegedly admitted to putting makeup on the child’s legs in an effort to cover the bruises once child welfare agents started visiting the residence.

The children were then taken into emergency protective custody by the DSS, the sheriff’s office said, while the oldest boy was transported to a hospital “due to the extent of the bruising and blood loss concerns.”

“The victim was interviewed at the hospital by medical personnel and one of our SVU investigators, where more detailed information was discovered,” the sheriff’s office said. “After that initial medical exam, the victim was evaluated again by a forensic doctor later last month, who stated the victim clearly met the criteria for a medical diagnosis of child torture. In forensic interviews at the Children’s Advocacy Center, the victim gave detailed and credible disclosures of multiple instances of abuse by various means from all four adults in the home.”

During court proceedings immediately following the arrests, prosecutors said that when the victim was rescued from the home, she said, “This is the best day of my life.”

Prosecutors also said that Tenika Draper forced the victim to eat “cat poop and cat treats” and eat gummy laxatives that “she thought were candy.”

More direct physical abuse is also alleged to have occurred – including being sat on; being beaten with boards, cords, and frying pans; being forced to stand in a garbage can; being placed in “hypothermia baths;” being forced to stay in the closet for long periods of time and sleep there; and being forced to kneel inside wooden crates.

The girl was not allowed to use the bathroom, prosecutors said, adding that she was forced to clean up her own waste and at least once had her face rubbed in the carpet when she failed to sufficiently cleanse the area.