MASON, Ohio -- A Warren County chiropractor on Thursday pleaded guilty to abusing a 3-month-old girl in his care so severely she was hospitalized with brain damage, fractured ribs and hemorrhaging inside her eyes.
Prosecutors wrote in a news release that Jason Bittner, 33, had attacked the girl Feb. 26 and declined to seek medical help for a full two days after. When the girl's mother took the child to the hospital, Bittner told police the baby fell off the couch in a "baby bouncer type seat" without a harness.
In reality, prosecutors claimed, he lost his temper while the child was "fussing."
Although he was initially charged with felonious assault and child endangering, he pleaded guilty to only the latter.
"This case demonstrates that there is no such thing as a stereotypical child abuser," Warren County Prosecutor David P. Fornshell wrote in the release. "No matter how things appear on the surface, you simply never know who might be capable of causing these types of horrible injuries to an infant child."
According to the release, doctors are unsure what the girl's long-term health prognosis might be.
