Criminal charges have been filed against Charles Beenken, of Frederic, WI following an incident that occurred on November 18, 2018. According to the criminal complaint Burnett County law enforcement received a report of a domestic incident. The individual who called 911 had escaped the residence, and told law enforcement that the suspect had choked a 5-year-old child and was still at the residence.
Law enforcement responded to the residence and after checking numerous rooms of the residence (many of which were found to be contaminated by animal feces on the floor) they located a child’s bed with a small lump of blankets. Inside the blankets, they found a child who was crying and had visible injuries. The child stopped crying when he saw the uniforms that the Deputies were wearing, and allowed a Deputy to pick him up.
The criminal complaint states that the child was bleeding from the head and had a large laceration on his forehead. The child told Deputies, “I need to go to a doctor, my daddy hurt me.” Deputies also observed that the child’s left eye was swollen shut and the child’s face was blue/purple in color with blood coming from his nostrils and mouth and dried blood all over his face. The child also smelled like swamp water. The child was safely removed from the residence and taken for medical assistance. The child was later diagnosed with a broken orbital bone, broken sinus cavity, bleeding in the sinus cavity, a subdural hematoma between his skull and brain, and had gravel in some bodily orifices.
Deputies conducted a full search of the residence, and did not locate anyone else. In the basement, Deputies found gravel on the basement floor and a patch of water that was bloody in color along with a broken plastic electrical cord reel that appeared to have blood on it. Samples of the bloody water and the gravel were collected as evidence along with the plastic reel. Deputies also found marijuana and a smoking pipe in the basement.
When investigators interviewed the 911 caller she said that on the date of the incident, she had smoked marijuana with Beenken and shortly after that heard the child screaming for help. When she went downstairs, she saw that Beenken had the child on the floor, pushing the child’s face into the concrete. She went on to say that Beenken also grabbed her, pulling her to the floor. She recalled that there was a pool of blood around the child, and that at one point Beenken held both her face and the child’s face to the floor, demanding that they each tell him that they love him, and stating that he was going to kill them both. She told investigators Beenken strangled her around her neck two times, blocking her ability to breathe. At some point, Beenken left the basement, locking her and the child inside. After attempting to apply pressure to the child’s injuries and placing him in a dry area of the basement, the 911 caller managed to escape the basement and went to call 911.
A forensic interview of the child was also conducted. The child told investigators that during the incident, Beenken dragged him down the steps and then started punching him “everywhere”. The child also told investigators that the 911 caller ended up on the floor with him and that Beenken hurt them both. The child went on to say that he was saved by “The cops.”