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Before her three grandchildren left her Palmdale, Calif., home to be with relatives on the Uintah-Ouray Reservation in Utah, they were healthy and happy, Leoncis Rodriguez says.
But less than a month later, one of the children lies in a coma in a Salt Lake City hospital; another is covered in burns and bruises. Authorities say they had suffered "egregious abuse" by their other grandmother.
"They didn't have to suffer like this," Rodriguez said Friday. She insists that Jose, who will turn 4 on Sept. 21, Emilio, 3, and their sister Mona, who turns 2 on Sunday, were taken from her and her husband by people making a false claim that Ute tribal members had a legal right to them.
Now, Charlissa Sireech, 45, is being held in jail in connection with the attacks on the children. She is charged with seven counts of assault resulting in serious bodily injury and assault with a dangerous weapon while within Indian country, and she is the children's maternal grandmother. The toddlers and their sister were placed in Sireech's care on Aug. 7. Sireech is accused of slamming the two boys against a hard floor, and investigators say she repeatedly burned the younger boy with a curling iron.
Leoncis Rodriguez came to Utah from California after learning of her grandchildren's ordeal and she and her husband, Samuel, have regained custody of the three. The youngest two have been reunited with their grandparents; Jose is still hospitalized.
"They were tickled pink to see her," said Carol Sisco, a spokeswoman for the Utah Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS).
Two girls who had been living with Sireech, ages 7 and 8 and half-sisters of the Rodriguez children, were placed in foster homes, Sisco said. DCFS was not involved in the case until Jose and Emilio were injured.
Leoncis Rodriguez is staying with relatives in Kearns to be near Jose. The boy shows little brain activity and is not expected to walk, talk or feed himself again, according to assistant U.S. attorney Barbara Bearnson.
At a federal court hearing Friday, Bearnson said the two boys angered Sireech by speaking in Spanish and not obeying her. Their 8-year-old half-sister told police that Sireech began beating the little boys soon after they arrived at her Fort Duchesne home, she said.
"They were doing OK for the first week or so," Bearnson told U.S. Magistrate Brooke Wells. "After that, they weren't doing OK."
Authorities say Jose was brought unconscious to the Uintah Basin Medical Center on Aug. 30 by Sireech's live-in boyfriend. He was taken by helicopter to Primary Children's Medical Center in Salt Lake City for life-threatening head injuries.
At the same time, Emilio was at the medical center with bruises and burns. Doctors immediately contacted police.
A sworn statement from an FBI agent says the boyfriend said Sireech had beaten Jose until he was unconscious. He also said he had heard the boys screaming in the past while Sireech beat them, but that he always left when it happened.
At Friday's hearing, Sireech, in a barely audible voice, pleaded not guilty to all counts. Wells ordered her jailed until her trial in November, citing the "extremely aggravating" circumstances of the alleged crime and Sireech's criminal history.
Authorities say Sireech has been convicted of drunken driving and two counts of child endangerment. Bearnson said she has had 30 to 40 arrests and referrals to the Ute tribal court, most of them alcohol-related. Some of the cases were later dismissed.
"The defendant has a long history of alcohol abuse," Bearnson said.
She said that Sireech fled when the investigation into the boys' injuries began and was traced to a Salt Lake City hotel after she tried to relay a message through a tribal dispatcher for family members to meet her "at the usual location."
Rodriguez said her three grandchildren came to her Palmdale home in April 2003 after her son and daughter-in-law signed a notarized statement that they were not able to care for them.
Later, the daughter-in-law wanted the children back, she claims, and several tribal members submitted papers to the Los Angeles County Superior Court in Lancaster, Calif., asserting that the children must be returned to Utah under the Indian Child Welfare Act. The act guarantees tribes can control the placement of Native American children.
However, Rodriguez contends tribal officials were never part of the request to bring the children to Utah. She says the California court did not confirm the authenticity of the request before deciding it had no authority under the ICWA to stop the transfer.
The children's mother said they would be living with her aunt, but instead they were given to Sireech, Rodriguez said.
Tribal officials could not be reached for comment Friday. Rodriguez said her son and daughter-in-law now live in Wisconsin, but are in Salt Lake City to visit Jose; they also could not be reached.
Rodriguez says she and her husband already were struggling financially and had to borrow money for her to travel to Utah - but her grandchildren needed her.
She said: "I'm here to protect these kids with my life against anyone like [Sireech]."