Background: The victim”s room in a photo taken after he died and filed as a court exhibit. (Ontario Superior Court in Milton, Ontario). Inset: Brandy Cooney and Becky Hamber (Facebook).
The case against a pair of Canadian parents accused of killing their foster son continues, with unsettling new allegations against the women coming to light during their trial.
Brandy Cooney, 43, and Becky Hamber, 45, face several charges, including first-degree murder, confinement, assault with a weapon, and failing to provide the necessaries of life. They have pleaded not guilty to all of them.
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Cooney took the stand this week, claiming she and her wife loved and cared for the 12-year-old boy referred to as L.L. — as well as his younger brother J.L. — and did the best they could under difficult circumstances. She admitted to restraining them, as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported, but only because she said the children injured her and Hamber, could injure themselves, and urinated and defecated everywhere.
“Yes, I did zip-tie the end of [their wet suit] sleeves to stop them from using their hands to choke themselves out,” she reportedly told the courtroom, adding that they occasionally would zip-tie helmets to the boys’ heads to prevent them from punching themselves.
As Law&Crime previously reported, the women are accused of forcing the boys into zip-tied wet suits, making them sleep in tents, giving them only pureed food, and exchanging hateful messages about the children.
“Restraints were a last resort,” Cooney stated, per reporters in the room, though she later admitted that “at times” they were restrained often.
Prosecutors told the courtroom that the boys were locked in their bedrooms for 18 hours at times, and bells were placed above doors in the house so the women knew where the boys were. Assistant Crown Attorney Monica MacKenzie also threw cold water on the claim that the kids hurt the adults.
“The reasons for restraints and locking them in their rooms was because you were so worried about injury to you or Hamber, or the boys or pets — injuries which never happened?” asked MacKenzie.
“There were a lot of injuries over the years,” Cooney replied. “We were often hit, punched, kicked, stuff thrown at us.”
“But not to the extent that you had to seek medical attention?” continued MacKenzie.
“No,” responded Cooney.
On Dec. 21, 2022, L.L. was found unresponsive, soaking wet, and covered in vomit in Cooney and Hamber’s Milton, Ontario, home. He was reportedly so emaciated that, though he was 12 years old at the time, he looked like he could have been 6. He was later pronounced dead — possibly from hypothermia or cardiac arrest due to severe malnourishment, a pathologist said, but his exact cause of death was uncertain.
According to prosecutors, on March 11, 2022, Cooney messaged Hamber, “Can I just not feed at all?”
Hamber allegedly responded, “No food unless calm,” the CBC reported.
A month later, Hamber reportedly told Cooney that J.L. needs to eat before bed because the boys “can’t be skeletons.”
The women “hated, abused, and neglected” L.L. and his brother J.L. — who is now 13 and who testified during the trial — the prosecution said in court, per The Independent. The boys were Indigenous, moved from their long-term foster home to Hamber and Cooney’s care in 2017, and were apparently about to be adopted by the couple when L.L. died.
Other alleged pieces of evidence have been presented in the courtroom. Two days before L.L. died, someone in the home searched on Google via an iPad, “I hate my child.” Days before that, another search apparently read, “I did not love my adopted child.”
The trial began in mid-September. It is ongoing.
