A Missouri foster mother accused of swapping a teenage girl for a monkey has been found guilty of child endangerment but escaped jail time. Brenda Deutsch, 70, was sentenced to seven years last week after she sent the girl, now 17, to live in Texas with a friend. Court documents, reviewed by Fox News Digital, stated that Deutsch told the friend that they could keep the teenager but that she would be “keeping the check.” According to the San Antonio Express News, the “check” was a reference to a government stipend given to Missouri foster parents. While at the address in Texas, the girl was forced to endure dirty conditions and live among exotic animals, the records state.
Last Thursday, Deutsch, of Winfield, had her sentence suspended and was placed on three years’ probation by the judge, according to Fox 2 KTVI. Deutsch, who had fostered more than 200 children over the years, also had her foster care license revoked. Brina Johnson, the 70-year-old’s biological daughter, expressed her shock at the sentence after testifying about alleged abuse.
She had been seated with a former foster child during proceedings. “I’m kinda lost for words because this is not the end we wished for,” Johnson told Fox 2 KTVI. The daughter also explained her mother’s habit of collecting exotic animals. “That’s what she did; she had at least seven monkeys,” Johnson said. But she wasn’t any nicer to those monkeys than she was to a child.” Deutsch was arrested in April and pleaded guilty to one count of child endangerment in June.
The case dates to November 2024 when Missouri Department of Social Services Children’s Division received an anonymous tip about the teenager suffering mental and physical abuse at Deutsch's hands, according to court documents reviewed by Fox News Digital. “A witness, who had come forward with some information regarding the systemic abuse that was going on in the home, had said that they had been asked to bring the child down to Texas and bring the monkey back in return,” Lincoln County prosecutor Mike Wood told KSDK last year. In February 2025, a school-security officer began investigating after hearing a rumor that the girl had been swapped for a monkey. That same month, the girl was taken to another Texas residence by Deutsch’s friend, court documents state.
The owner of that second Texas residence took the girl to the Eastland County Sheriff's Office in late February so that she could be taken into custody by Texas Child Protective Services. Lincoln County prosecutor Mike Wood revealed that a number of allegations of abuse had been made against Deutsch. “Two things that really stood out was (sic) the number of children that had been fostered through that home and then the allegations that these types of abuse and emotional neglect had been going on for what seemed to be perhaps a decade,” he told KSDK. Bryan Hargis, who had defended Deutsch in court, told Fox 2 KTVI: “They’ve tried to turn somebody into a villain that’s not.
She’s done missionary work.”
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