Jamie Sena appears in a mugshot, inset against an image showing a padlock on a child’s bed inside of a home ruined by child abuse in New Mexico. (New Mexico State Police; Curry County Detention Center)
One of three New Mexico women previously facing a combined 51 child abuse charges was sentenced after recently entering into a plea agreement with prosecutors, Law&Crime has learned.
Jamie Kay Sena, 29, pleaded no contest on July 7 to four counts of child abuse that does not result in death or great bodily harm.
She was found guilty on each count by 9th Judicial District Court Judge Drew Douglas Tatum. And, for each count, she was sentenced to three years in state jail along with two years of probation. Two of those sentences, however, were imposed concurrently – meaning she will serve those sentences at the same time as the other two.
Additionally, the court credited the defendant with 317 days already spent in pre-trial detention, meaning her total time behind bars will be just over five years and two months, court records show. The defendant’s total time on parole will also be capped at two years.
According to the disposition of judgment and sentence provided to Law&Crime by the 9th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, each of the four separate counts that Sena pleaded no contest to concern child abuse incidents that occurred on four separate days in July 2022.
In exchange for taking a plea deal, prosecutors agreed to drop 12 additional counts, including 10 counts of child abuse, and one count each of conspiracy to commit child abuse and obstructing a child abuse or child neglect investigation, the judgment and sentence shows.
According to Curry County jail records reviewed by Law&Crime, Sena was originally detained on 23 separate child-abuse related charges.
In August and September 2022, Sena, her ex-girlfriend, Jayme Kushman, 37, and Kushman’s earlier ex-girlfriend, Lora Melancon, 42, were arrested and charged with 51 combined child-abuse related counts over incidents that spanned multiple years.
Some of the alleged child abuse incidents are said to have occurred in Texas. Most of the incidents are alleged to have occurred in the Land of Enchantment – at a residence in Texico, a tiny city in Curry County just across the border from the Lone Star State.
As Law&Crime previously reported, a criminal complaint alleged that six children between the ages of 5 and 16 – including Sena’s own children, younger relatives of Kushman, a neighboring child, and a foster child – endured various forms of physical and emotional abuse.
New Mexico State Police documented a litany of horrors at Kushman’s home after the children were removed from the premises in July 2022.
At the time, a state child welfare agent and two NMSP officers found that sewage was backed up, the building reeked of urine, there was no running water, chains were attached to walls, and a padlock was on at least one of the beds. The children in the house were often locked in dog cages in freezing cold weather and forced to stand in the corner for days at a time, court documents obtained by Albuquerque-based NBC affiliate KOB allege.
“[N]obody knew anything or did something for these children,” one investigator wrote in the complaint. “It is surreal and baffling that this was happening and nobody acted until New Mexico State Police got involved.”
According to the NMSP, the children told law enforcement that they were routinely chained up, beaten with wooden paddles, and starved as punishment for taking food from the fridge. A resulting investigation found videos of the abuse, police said, including the children’s screams, and a boy “being smothered in his own vomit.”
Officers also said they found an image of children “eating spaghetti from inside a filthy bathtub with their bare hands and naked.”
Kushman, who the district attorney’s office described as “the ringleader” of the child abuse in a phone call with Law&Crime, is set to be sentenced during her own plea hearing on July 13.
Melancon’s plea hearing is slated for July 17.
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