'Cold and cruel': Brother of starved teen Sabrina Ray pleads guilty, gets 10 years in prison

The Des Moines Register

ADEL, Ia — The adoptive brother of Sabrina Ray, a central Iowa teenager who died in May, was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to seriously injuring her prior to her death.

Justin Ray listens to a judge before he is sentenced Friday at the Dallas County Courthouse in Adel.

Justin Dale Ray, 22, pleaded guilty to two counts of willful injury. Sabrina Ray, 16, was found dead May 12 at the home of her foster parents in Perry. In the weeks before Sabrina died, Justin drop-kicked her down a basement staircase, leaving her unable to walk, talk, eat or drink normally, prosecutors have said.

District Judge Terry Rickers sentenced Justin to 10 years in prison after he pleaded guilty at the Dallas County Courthouse in Adel. The judge called his behavior "cold and cruel and despicable."

“There is clearly a darkness in your heart, Mr. Ray," Rickers said. "It needs to be cleansed.”

Justin Ray is accused of child endangerment and willful injury.

During the hearing, Justin told the judge he pushed Sabrina down a flight of stairs and kicked her in the chin. When asked if he wanted to say anything else before he was sentenced, he told the judge, “Nothing, your honor.”

Assistant County Attorney Jeannine Gilmore called Justin’s offenses heinous and damaging to a girl who looked to his family to “be her forever home.”

“This young girl did not have a chance to blossom in her home and to feel the nurturing of an older brother as a role model,” Gilmore said.

Before the sentencing, Assistant County Attorney Stacy Ritchie read a statement from one of Sabrina’s younger siblings, who wrote that Justin would receive a wake-up call Friday. The juvenile said, “we did not deserve what you gave us.”

“You destroyed my sister and I’s life with your actions,” the juvenile wrote, asking if Justin remembered their fond memories together. “It’s breaking my heart. … Why couldn’t you just keep our life like that?”

Justin was initially charged with two counts of child endangerment and two counts of willful injury. He is the only of four family members charged in Sabrina's death to reach a plea agreement with prosecutors.

Sabrina weighed 56 pounds and was severely malnourished at the time of hear death, authorities said.

Her adoptive parents, Marc Alan Ray, 41, and Misty Jo Bousman-Ray, 40, face multiple felony charges in Sabrina's abuse and death, including first-degree murder, kidnapping and child endangerment. They have pleaded not guilty; a trial date has not been set.

The husband and wife, who ran a daycare center they called Rays of Sunshine Daycare, took in Sabrina as a foster child in 2011 and adopted her in 2013. The shy and small girl with dimples and dark brown hair was separated from her older half-sister and four brothers before the age of 10.

On the day police found Sabrina dead, Justin Ray was home while his parents were in Disney World in Florida, prosecutors have said. Two girls who were adopted by the Rays, ages 10 and 12, were in the room with Sabrina's body when officers arrived that evening.

The couple was also charged with two counts of child endangerment causing serious injury and two counts of neglect or abandonment in relation to the two other girls that were found in the home.

A third child, a boy, was also removed from the home, police said. The children were home-schooled.

Sabrina's adoptive grandmother, Carla Bousman, 62, has been charged with first-degree kidnapping, child endangerment causing death and obstructing prosecution or defense. She assisted in kidnapping and torturing Sabrina, who was disabled, and two other adopted girls in the home, authorities allege. She has also been accused of helping cover up Sabrina's death.

Carla Bousman is charged with kidnapping and child endangerment.

Josie Raye Bousman, Sabrina's 20-year-old cousin, is charged with three counts of kidnapping, child endangerment causing death and obstructing prosecution. She helped keep Sabrina confined and denied her food and water, according to a criminal complaint.

Her trial is scheduled to begin March 26.

The daycare the Rays ran was visited by state inspectors and social workers each year from 2013 to 2016 after at least two complaints alleged inadequate nutrition for children and corporal punishment, public records show. Workers who visited the home reported they found no evidence of abuse at the time.

Josie Bousman is charged with three counts of kidnapping and one count of child endangerment resulting in death.

The accusations surrounding Sabrina's death were made public months after similarly alarming abuse allegations involving 16-year-old Natalie Finn, who starved to death in October 2016 in West Des Moines, and 17-year-old Malayia Knapp, who fled an abusive home in 2015 in Urbandale.

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