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| Andrew Charles Pride |
A father was found guilty of child cruelty and will spend years in prison for the crime.
31-year-old Andrew Charles Pride, of Thomasville, Georgia, was sentenced to five years in prison for beating and whipping the genitals of a child of 22-month-old boy, when he was having difficulty in potty training.
The beating was so severe that it caused the child's genitals to bleed and it left welt marks. At first, Pride allegedly tried to convince police that another child was responsible for the beating. However, in court, the jury did not believe him. A Cobb County jury found Pride guilty of cruelty to children in the first grade.
"This was not an accident," Assistant District Attorney Chuck Boring said. "This was malicious, and it was all because of potty training. Pride beat a 22-month-old baby in the groin several times because he did not want to pee on the potty. His actions are the definition of malice," he said.
Pride allegedly encouraged an older child to testify that another child had inflicted the beating on the child.
He was sentenced to five years in jail. Upon release, Pride must serve 15 years on probation and have no unsupervised contact with minors.