A former Arizona Department of Child Services case manager and a longtime employee of the Cochise County Sheriff’s Office pleaded guilty last week to four felonies each involving child abuse of the couple’s four adoptive children from 2016 to 2018.
The Dec. 14 change of plea hearing for Brian Campbell and his wife Monica Campbell came nearly 30 months after a sheriff’s deputy saw video in July 2018 of the parents Tasering one of their children. The deputy’s concerns led to a large-scale investigation which resulted in multiple felonies filed against the parents.
The Campbells will be sentenced Jan. 22, 2021 by Judge Timothy Dickerson of the Cochise County Superior Court. They each face up to three years in state prison, although both are also eligible for probation. The judge could also sentence them to both prison and probation.
Court records show Brian Campbell’s job for DCS put him in charge of assessing child safety and investigating reports of suspected child abuse and neglect. Monica Campbell was a 911 dispatch supervisor with the sheriff’s office.
In early 2019, the Campbells were formally charged with multiple felonies involving alleged child abuse, maltreatment, and assault. Testimony and evidence presented to the Court to support those charges revealed a number of instances in which the children reported acts of abuse to CCSO and/or DCS personnel.
A lawsuit filed in November against Cochise County and the State of Arizona calls the Campbell home “a house of horrors.” The lawsuit seeks $4 million in damages for each of the children, claiming that sheriff’s deputies and state case workers mishandled -and even intentionally ignored- myriad allegations of abuse.
One such claim involves a December 2016 police call to Valley Union High School during which one of the children said in front of CCSO Sgt. Louie Tartaglia that Monica Campbell had recently choked another of the children. The sergeant was also present when one of the children reported a sibling was required to stand naked in front of cameras.
Monica Campbell came to the school and admitted pushing one of the children. Despite that, Tartaglia instructed the deputy who responded to the call to leave the room after which he allowed Monica Campbell to take the children home.
That deputy, Nelson Moreno, documented what transpired in his official report. He left CCSO a few months later.
But it was the quick thinking of Deputy Jordan Collins in July 2018 which prosecutor Michael Powell said exposed the Campbells’ facade as caring parents.
Collins was dispatched to the Campbell residence in response to a report from Monica Campbell that one of their adoptive sons was violent and needed to be removed from the home. The son posed such a threat, Collins was told, that the parents Tasered him.
But the deputy noted a much different story when he reviewed video footage from a security system setup inside the house. Instead of an out-of-control teenager, the video showed Brian Campbell punched the much smaller teen with a closed fist, knocking the youth down.
Brian Campbell then held the boy on the floor for several minutes. The boy later told Collins he struggled to breathe under his much larger father, which is why he tried to wriggle free. Eventually Monica Campbell provided Brian Campbell with a Taser that he used on the restrained teen.
Collins used his cell phone to record the video playback of the incident. That decision turned out to be very important because weeks later when CCSO obtained a search warrant for the security system they found the video of the July 2018 incident was gone.
The Taser incident is one of the four offenses Brian Campbell pleaded guilty to, one for each of the adoptive children. Monica Campbell pleaded guilty to four counts of facilitation of the abuse, again with one count for each of the children.
Two low level felonies are still pending against Jade Campbell, the couple’s biological daughter, for her role in the Taser incident. However, it was suggested during the parent’s change of plea hearing that Jade Campbell’s charges may be dismissed Jan. 22, the same day her parents are sentenced.