{"id":31960,"date":"2023-09-01T19:14:57","date_gmt":"2023-09-02T01:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/garland-malcolm-receives-maximum-sentence-for-child-abuse-in-cortez\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T01:49:48","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T07:49:48","slug":"garland-malcolm-receives-maximum-sentence-for-child-abuse-in-cortez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/garland-malcolm-receives-maximum-sentence-for-child-abuse-in-cortez\/","title":{"rendered":"Garland Malcolm receives maximum sentence for child abuse in Cortez"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Garland
Garland Malcolm was convicted on one count of child abuse July 14. (Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office\/Facebook)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Garland Malcolm was sentenced Monday to the maximum term of 32 years in prison for the abuse of her adopted 6-year-old son that resulted in severe head and bodily injuries in January 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cToday, the child injured in this incident received some small amount of justice,\u201d said prosecutor Jeremy Reed, adding that the boy \u201cwill never recover from his injuries, and will never regain the life he had.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sentence imposed by the court was appropriate to the crime committed, and justice was served,\u201d Reed said.<\/p>\n

Malcolm was convicted July 14 of one charge of child abuse, knowingly or recklessly causing bodily injury. It is a Class 3 felony.<\/p>\n

The investigation of the case began Jan. 6, 2022, when Sgt. Bryan Hill of the Montezuma County Sheriff\u2019s Office was called to Southwest Memorial Hospital to check on an unconscious juvenile.<\/p>\n

There, the boy had been intubated after the discovery of a \u201clarge subdural hematoma,\u201d also known as a brain bleed. Medical staff described his head injury as being consistent with that of someone who had been ejected from a motor vehicle or thrown from a horse.<\/p>\n

Other injuries he had included tears and hemorrhages in both retinas, a skull fracture and torn ligaments in his neck. Bruising was found on the lower portion of his body.<\/p>\n

He was then flown to Colorado Springs\u2019 Children\u2019s Hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n

Medical staff said there was no way he injured himself, as Malcolm had claimed. The affidavit obtained by The Journal<\/em> <\/a>said his injuries were \u201cdiagnostic of child physical abuse and abusive head trauma.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chris Veach, of Montezuma County Child Services, interviewed the injured boy\u2019s three other siblings, who described punishments in the Malcolm household. Malcolm and her husband, Roy Malcolm, adopted the three biological siblings in October 2020. They also have a biological child of their own.<\/p>\n

The children described their punishments for \u201cbeing naughty,\u201d saying they had to run laps around the house or the horse pasture when they got in trouble. Interviews also revealed that the children were spanked with a hairbrush and struck by their mother, bloodying their noses.<\/p>\n

In July, a Journal<\/em> reporter spoke with Reed, the deputy district attorney who worked on the case, to learn more about the child\u2019s current condition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe child can\u2019t walk, can\u2019t talk and can\u2019t interact with the world in any meaningful way,\u201d Reed said. The child is fed through a nutritional tube and must use a wheelchair. From the medical professional\u2019s testimony, the boy\u2019s injuries aren\u2019t likely to get better, Reed said.<\/p>\n

In the news release Monday, Reed acknowledged that the case deeply affected everyone involved, including medical providers, police, court personnel, district attorneys, caretakers, social workers and the jury members. He also thanked Rob Shapiro of the Attorney General Office and DA Christian Champaign of the Sixth Judicial District Attorney\u2019s Office for their assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI especially thank the members of the jury, who sat through very difficult testimony and photographic evidence, respected and followed their oath, and delivered a just and fair verdict,\u201d Reed said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pleasant View gets 32 years; child may never recover from injuries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30928,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-31960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81628,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31960\/revisions\/81628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31960"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=31960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}