BY DAN HILDEBRAN
A 33-year-old Bradford County mother pleaded with a judge to spare her from jail so she could work to regain custody of her children.
Bradford deputies arrested Whitnie Brianna Tetstone-Jenkins for child neglect on October 16, 2024, while executing a Drug Task Force search warrant for narcotics in her Riverbend Estates mobile home.
Also arrested for child neglect, possession of a controlled substance, and resisting an officer was her partner, 33-year-old John R. Stout.
According to an arrest report, deputies found methamphetamine, a glass pipe, and needles in a trash can within reach of a small child.
“In addition, wrote a deputy in the report, “multiple power tools including electric drills and saws were scattered throughout the house and on the floor within reach of a child. A machete was also located hanging from the ceiling by a hand screw.”
During a January 29 hearing, Tetstone-Jenkins entered an open plea of no contest. Her lawyer, Delinda Jan Smith, told Circuit Judge James M. Colaw that she and prosecutors had agreed that the defendant would be sentenced to community control. However, because Tetstone-Smith violated a pre-trial release no-contact order, which prohibited her from contacting her partner and co-defendant, the state was now insisting on a 90-day jail term in addition to supervised release.
Smith added that her client’s only concern was getting her children back after DCF officials took the two toddlers following their parents’ arrests.
“The only reason we’re in an open plea posture rather than entering negotiation is because Ms. Tetstone-Jenkins is on a parenting plan already,” Smith said. “She’s already working towards being reunified with her children. The 90 days in jail is 90 days off of her ability to work that case plan.”
“We were able to, a couple of weeks ago, when she was in front of Your Honor, to negotiate a community control sanction instead of a jail sanction,” Smith added. “The jail sanction is back on the table because of the violations of the pretrial release.”
Smith said that the co-defendants and parents of two young children were discussing their children during recorded jail calls.
“It was a violation, of course,” Smith said, “but they weren’t talking about how they were going to get out of this trouble or how she was going to say one thing or another in those violations.”
‘I had nobody’
Tetstone-Jenkins told the judge that she was totally dependent on Stout for money and had no one else to turn to after the couple was arrested.
“I have depended on him for 10 years,” she told the judge. “I’ve been with him for 10 years. I fully had my bank accounts, everything through him. That’s (why) I contacted him to begin with because I had no sense of—I mean, I fully put my life into this man. I had nobody.”
“What’s going on in this house?” the judge responded. “What’s going on? Help me understand that.”
“Our house was small,” the defendant answered. “My husband had a drug problem. They were after my husband. They let me leave that day. Whenever they arrested me, they let me leave with my children. I knew that was going to open up a DCF case. I knew that I passed the drug test that day and everything. I couldn’t help that he was struggling.”
Smith described her client’s marriage as an abusive relationship. “Maybe not physically abusive, but there was a lot of control— power and control issues going on.”
‘I’m not a criminal’
“You don’t have a drug problem?” Colaw asked the mother of two.
“I got mine under control,” Tetstone-Jenkins answered, adding that she had just entered her fifth year of a treatment program that includes a prescription of Suboxone, which is commonly used to treat opioid dependence.
Earlier in the day, Colaw sentenced Stout to two years in prison after he pleaded to drug and child neglect charges. With gain time, Stout could be released sooner.
“What happens when Mr. Stout gets out of prison in 18 months or so?” the judge asked Tetstone-Jenkins. “I mean, you’re still going to be under sentence. What happens when he gets out of prison? Do you have a plan for that?”
“I don’t,” the defendant admitted. “I don’t. We don’t even live in our home anymore. I currently live with my family. I don’t know. I can’t tell you what the future holds.”
“I’m not a criminal,” she continued, crying. I’m not a bad person. I’m not a bad mom. I’m sorry I’m emotional. This is very hard.”
Colaw told the defendant that the state’s request for 90 days in jail was reasonable, especially given that she had violated the no-contact order.
In a motion the state had earlier filed to revoke Tetstone-Jenkins’s bond, prosecutors claimed the couple talked by phone over 80 times while Stout remained in jail.
Trauma-bonded
The judge added that the mother’s ongoing communications with Stout might also impact her DCF parenting plan.
“Even if (DCF is) convinced of everything you’re telling me,” the judge said, “that you’re not someone who breaks the law, you are not a bad mom. They also have to be concerned about, well, despite those things, are you still a young lady who is emotionally tied to a man who is putting the kids at risk, and are you in a position and strong enough to not allow…that influence to come back in?”
“I’m not allowed to,” Tetstone-Jenkins answered. “I do love him, but I’ve been so happy. Every day, it gets easier because I’m trauma-bonded to him. Every day that he’s been gone, I’m becoming more and more myself and it feels good. I mean it really does.”
Colaw said that because of her repeated no-contact order violations, he would have considered a six-month jail term instead of the 90 days the state requested.
“But I’m going to give you a shot,” he told the 33-year-old. “I’m going to withhold adjudication of guilt. Place you on one year of Level 1 community control, followed by three years of supervised probation, special conditions. You served 20 days in jail with 20 days credit.”
He also warned the defendant that if it is proven that she violates any of the terms of her supervision, she should not be surprised if he sends her to jail for a longer time than the state had recommended.
Tetstone-Jenkins assured Colaw that she would comply with all the terms of her supervision, not only to stay out of jail but to rectify what she called the most severe penalty of the entire episode.
“I got the worst punishment,” she said, “when they took my children.”
