Woman in Torture Case Termed Insane : Prosecution: Her lawyer contends that she was not able to act rationally at the time her nephew was abused. He says she insists that the boy’s internal injuries resulted from a ‘freak accident.’

SANTA ANA —  An Orange woman charged with torturing her 10-year-old nephew was insane when she administered some of the abuse, but insists the internal injuries the child suffered were the result of a “freak accident,” her attorney said Monday.

Cynthia Medina, 31, has lapsed into a deep depression and remains under a suicide watch at the County Jail, where she is being held in protective custody, said defense attorney Richard C. Gilbert. Sources said the Medina case has been widely discussed among jail inmates and officials fear for her safety.

“She is very, very depressed and her heart is completely filled with sorrow and remorse for everything that has happened,” Gilbert said. “I believe she was insane at the time and she simply snapped and lost the ability to act like a rational human being. Only an insane person could have committed these horrible acts.”

Medina is scheduled to be arraigned Sept. 30 in Municipal Court in Santa Ana on four felony charges of child abuse and one felony charge of torture. Her case is the first in which the state’s 4-year-old torture law has been used in Orange County. Gilbert said his client may plead not guilty by reason of insanity.

Medina is accused of searing her nephew’s tongue with hot knives, beating him with an electrical cord and anally penetrating him with a souvenir baseball bat. The boy’s internal injuries were so severe that doctors had to perform a colostomy.

Prosecutors say the former elementary school playground supervisor abused the boy over the past year, but administered the most severe assault on Sept. 7. They say Medina attacked the boy because he was playing with her marijuana cigarettes.

The case has also raised questions about whether a physician acted quickly enough to report suspected abuse after examining the boy on Sept. 8. Social workers, investigating the report filed later that day, sought emergency medical treatment for the boy, who remains hospitalized in good condition. Authorities say the child nearly died of his injuries.

Prosecutor Charles J. Middleton declined to comment on Gilbert’s statements Monday but said he had never seen a defense attorney “grasp at straws” so early in a case.

Gilbert said Monday that his client is being unfairly portrayed by law enforcement and the media as a monster. He said Medina never intended to harm the child.

Medina acknowledges that because the child was in her care, she is ultimately responsible for his welfare, Gilbert said. But she disputes many of the allegations made by authorities, he said. According to Medina, the boy’s internal injuries were the result of a freak accident, Gilbert added.

“He was being paddled with this miniature bat and he was trying to push her away from him and there was a struggle,” Gilbert said. “They fell and the bat inadvertently, by accident, went into the child’s rectum as she was paddling him.”

Gilbert said the boy’s initial report to authorities corroborated this version. Gilbert said he is concerned that “well-meaning people” who are giving the boy gifts in the hospital may be inadvertently causing him to change his story.

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Medina also disputes reports that she heated up knives on a stove top before sticking the red-hot metal to the boy’s tongue, Gilbert said. According to Gilbert, Medina contends that those burns occurred when the boy grabbed a heated spatula she was using to scrape ice from her freezer and put it in his mouth.

The attorney said he plans to challenge the torture law.

“I’m not in any way downplaying the injuries in this case, but there have been other cases involving serious injuries over the last few years and torture was never charged,” he said. “The law is so poorly written that almost any case involving child abuse can be charged as torture.”

Gilbert said he also questions whether public policy may have influenced his client, noting that Assemblyman Mickey Conroy (R-Orange) authored an unsuccessful bill this year to require paddling of youths convicted of painting graffiti.

“I think when her own public official tells her it’s appropriate to cane children and you have someone who is susceptible to mental disease, that’s how these kinds of events can take place,” he said.

Conroy took offense.

“My bill addresses judicial discipline in an open court,” Conroy said in a prepared statement. “This (Gilbert’s remarks) shows to what lengths some attorneys will go to excuse any action, including torture.”