BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
KEYSTONE HEIGHTS—Clay deputies arrested William James Costello, 38, of Immokalee Road on March 22 for cruelty toward a child.
According to an arrest warrant affidavit, the child’s mother reported bruising on the 6-year-old after the boy visited his father over a weekend in January. The father sent a text message to the mother telling her he had spanked his son because the boy continuously lied to him.
The mother also had photographs of a 2018 spanking which left bruising on the child. She told Clay Sheriff’s Detective J.R. Drury that she reported the 2018 incident to the Bradford County Sheriff’s Office, but a criminal investigation was not pursued.
Drury wrote that he and a Florida Department of Children and Families investigator interviewed the victim at the First Coast Child Protection Team in Jacksonville where the victim said his father beat him with a cooking spatula several times.
When the detective contacted the defendant by phone, Costello refused to meet with law enforcement.
“He further advised he does not want to speak to DCF and does not want them on his property and will not agree to any sanctions placed by DCF,” wrote Drury. “The defendant went on to explain that corporal punishment is legal in the state of Florida and that he did nothing wrong.”
The detective wrote that the bruises on the victim were consistent with excessive and unreasonable corporal punishment indicative of child abuse.
