Idaho Mom Shaves Daughters’ Heads for Eating Ice Cream, Arrested Months Later

Idaho Mom Shaves Daughters’ Heads for Eating Ice Cream, Arrested Months Later
Priscilla Zapata (Canyon County Sheriffs Office)
Bowen Xiao
10/31/2017
Updated:
3/25/2019

A mom from Canyon Country, Idaho was sentenced for beating her four children and shaving the heads of two girls—all because they ate a whole tub of ice cream.

Priscilla Zapata, 26, told relatives that she “lost it” after finding out her children, two boys, and two girls had eaten all the ice cream back in the evening of July 18 this year, NBC affiliate WCNC reported.

According to WCNC, Zapata allegedly beat all four of her children with a belt, causing bruising. Authorities did not reveal the age of the children.

One of the daughters told investigators that her mother had pushed her face into the ice cream and hit her “everywhere.”

In addition, the other daughter said she “felt like [she] was going to die” after Zapata choked her against the wall, WCNC reported.

The mother is also accused of shaving off both girls heads as a form of punishment. One of the children said she did not say anything when her head was being shaved, for fear her mother would retaliate. Both the boys suffered from similar injuries and bruising, PEOPLE reported.

According to East Idaho News, the woman was found guilty of child abuse charge and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. She also has four years of felony probation.

“It’s fairly obvious that Ms. Zapata has some severe anger issues that she needs to address, and to her credit, she has been working on it through counseling and parenting classes,” Canyon County Prosecutor Bryan Taylor told East Idaho News. “I’m hopeful that she can take advantage of the resources available to her while on probation and make the appropriate changes in her life to become a better parent.

But it took nearly three months after the incident for an arrest warrant to be issued.

All of the four children were placed into the custody of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, WCNC reported. Zapata’s next appearance in court is on Nov. 8, for a preliminary hearing.

A judge in her case, George Southworth, explained why he didn’t sentence her to years in prison.

“You have engaged yourself in appropriate treatment, your CPA case, and are involved in counseling, so it appears you are engaging in a process on how to better handle your children,” Southworth said, reported East Idaho News. “You’ve caused a lot of damage to your children and it’s going to take you a long time, if ever, before you can rebuild that trust.”
Another recent case, also involving shaved hair caused widespread outrage on social media.

A mother from Massachusetts is looking to sue a Dracut town group home, after staff sent her daughter to a salon to shave her head, with one of them claiming that her curly hair would grow back straight.

“I am very upset. And I’m not going to stop being upset because I feel like my child was assaulted and violated,” mother Denise Robinson told NECN.

Robinson said the group home never contacted or even asked permission to shave her 7-year-old daughter’s hair. Tru is now nearly fully bald.

When the mother dropped off her daughter at Little Heroes Group Home earlier this month, her hair reached well past her shoulders, according to Daily News. Robinson said staff only told her the decision to cut off the hair was for hygiene reasons.
According to Yahoo, Robinson first took to Facebook to open up about the incident.

“Tru was assaulted yesterday at school and anyone who knows me know that I never claim racism — But why was my daughter’s head shaved?” she wrote. “There are three other girls in her class, two white girls, one black, none of these girls got scaled. Why Tru??” she wrote.

Bowen Xiao was a New York-based reporter at The Epoch Times. He covers national security, human trafficking and U.S. politics.
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