Left: A photo showing the alleged sleeping area where Renee Leon forced her 7-year-old stepson to sleep on a “mat with no blanket.” Background: One of the Ring cameras that Renee Leon allegedly used to monitor her stepson (King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office).
A Washington state woman who once ran a daycare is accused of subjecting her 7-year-old stepson to a horrifying punishment regime, which included forcing him to swallow Dawn dish soap and putting hot sauce up his nose.
Renee Leon, of Burien, is charged with three counts of second-degree assault of a child in a domestic violence case that prosecutors say revolved around punishing her stepson in a number of sickening ways.
Court documents obtained by Law&Crime outline how Leon allegedly bound the boy’s hands for days, shoved her nails underneath his chin, and forced him to sleep on a “mat with no blanket” in a “walled-off” area of a bedroom away from his brothers while monitoring him with Ring cameras.
The child told his school nurse about the alleged abuse, and the nurse then contacted Child Protective Services and the King County Sheriff’s Office.
“He disclosed that his mom has actually been tying up his hands,” the court documents say about Leon and the victim, citing statements provided by the nurse. “He told me she had his hands like this all weekend,” the staffer alleged.
“Additionally, [the boy] told me that his mom puts hot sauce on his fingers and forces him to stick his fingers up his nose,” the staffer added. “CPS asked about the hot sauce. [The boy] said he got hot sauce on his fingers because he was picking his nose. [The boy] said ‘she looked on the cameras’ and told him to put his hands in his nose eight times because he picked his nose eight times.”
The boy told CPS and the nurse that his nose was “burning a lot” when his fingers were inside of it, according to the court documents. The boy said that Leon — who once operated a Normandy Park daycare called Aunties Playhouse and completed thousands of hours of child care training — “wrapped his hands individually as if they were mittens” and noted how she did it as his “punishment.”
The boy was asked how long the wraps were on his hands and he said the “first time was two days” and the second time was “the weekend, four days,” according to prosecutors.
“[The boy] said she makes him wear the wraps because he’s ‘throwing gang signs,’ flipping people off, ‘picking my nose’ and ‘touching myself,'” the court documents allege.
The school nurse reported that the boy’s hands appeared “extremely irritated, inflamed, and concerning,” according to prosecutors. When asked about other punishments, he “talked about having soap in his mouth, ‘Dawn soap,’ that he has to swallow,” the court documents say.
“[The boy] said the amount depends on how much he lies,” according to the documents. “[The boy] said he also has to stand in the corner until dinner.”
The nurse filed her report on the boy’s alleged statements on May 27 and investigators went to Leon’s home on June 5. While there, “numerous photographs of a person in a straitjacket” were found hanging around the area where the boy slept, according to the court documents.
Asked about the photos, the boy allegedly told investigators “he’s going to end up there.” He said that Leon told him, “That’s where I’m gonna end up at,” per the court documents, and also alleged that he often “feels sad” about the way he’s treated.
Leon is scheduled to go on trial in early August.
