Parents Plead Not Guilty to Abusing Girl, 16 : Arraignment: The Westlake residents are charged with beating and imprisoning their adopted teen-age daughter.

A well-to-do Westlake couple pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to felony charges of repeatedly beating their adopted daughter and keeping her locked inside a back-yard racquetball court for more than a year.

Richard and Charlotte Russo were arrested May 25 on suspicion of child abuse after their 16-year-old daughter had been picked up for shoplifting and investigators discovered bruises and other marks on the girl’s body.

But prosecutors waited until Tuesday to file charges against the couple, spending months sifting through conflicting evidence while the girl remains in a foster home, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Dee Corona.

Both Richard Russo, 49, and Charlotte Russo, 51, now face one count each of felony child abuse and misdemeanor child abuse. They face up to three years in state prison if convicted.

The parents were released on $5,000 bail each hours after their arrest. At Wednesday’s arraignment, Municipal Judge Bruce A. Clark exonerated the Russos’ bail and scheduled a Sept. 13 preliminary hearing.

But the judge ordered the Russos to have no contact with the girl after Corona argued that they “have frequently applied pressure on her to change her story.”

The felony complaint stems from a weekend in May when the child was kicked out of the family home and ended up sleeping on the ground outside the Westlake High School library without even a blanket, Corona said.

“That weekend culminated in a beating by the mother,” the prosecutor said, adding that neighbors witnessed Charlotte Russo--a registered nurse--beat and bite her daughter.

Richard Russo, a longtime area stockbroker, stood idly by last May while his wife administered the particularly brutal beating that included biting the girl in at least three places on her arms, Corona said.

The young girl also had “spent the previous year essentially living in the locked bathroom of a racquetball court” as punishment for juvenile offenses, Corona said. “If she was really good, she might have been given a blanket.”

The teen-age victim admittedly is a “difficult child” who suffers from a heart condition that has so far required four surgeries, Corona said. “Her parents were just sick of her,” she added.

The Russos made their court appearance Wednesday only long enough to enter not guilty pleas.

Attorneys for the Russos, who also have four grandchildren, said the felony and misdemeanor charges stem from a disagreement with the district attorney’s office over how to deal with a troubled teen-ager.

“The message is very clear in Ventura County: You best not be disciplining your children,” said Joseph A. Hackett, who represents Charlotte Russo.

Oxnard attorney Jorge A. Alvarado, who is representing Richard Russo, said the girl lied to investigators about being beaten, bitten and locked away.

“That’s embellishment and really far, far from what happened,” he said outside court. “None of that occurred.”

Hackett said the girl had been in trouble with authorities several times, and that the Russos punished the child accordingly.

“There are many facts in this case that are highly disputed,” Hackett said. “Unfortunately, the district attorney’s office is now taking the victim’s side of what happened.”

Hackett said any witnesses to the May beating would have been more than 100 feet away and more than likely unable to ascertain the severity of any punishment.

He did admit that the girl was forced to live inside the racquetball court, but said “it was a form of ostracization,” not punishment. “We’re not really dealing with a substandard living condition,” Hackett said.

The girl’s six siblings, one of which also is adopted, will help prove his client’s case, Hackett said. “They might be very instrumental in establishing the fact that this was a very difficult child right from the start,” he said.

The defense attorney also downplayed the severity of the injuries the girl sustained.

“You’re talking about bruises and bite marks,” Hackett said. “Is this the stuff of felony complaints? There was no great bodily harm.”

Corona said the other children are still living in the home in the Westlake area of Thousand Oaks with the defendants.