A 70-year-old Missouri woman has pleaded guilty after authorities say she attempted to trade a child in her care for an exotic animal.
Brenda Deutsch was originally charged in April 2025 with felony counts of neglect, child abuse and child endangerment. She was later indicted on two counts of abuse or neglect of a child and one count of endangering the welfare of a child.
“It wasn’t isolated. It was a culture of abuse and neglect,” Lincoln County Prosecuting Attorney Mike Wood said at the time.
On Monday, Deutsch pleaded guilty to one count of endangering the welfare of a child in the first degree, with the other two charges dropped under a plea deal.
The case began in November 2024, when the Missouri Department of Social Services received an anonymous tip that Deutsch was abusing the victim, a girl who was eventually located in Texas, according to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office.
Interviewed the following month, the girl said her abuse had started three years earlier and continued from September 2022 through January 2025, culminating in an effort to trade her for a monkey, according to a probable cause statement.
She told investigators she had been hit with a paddle and smacked, and that she had witnessed other children being abused.
In February 2025, a Winfield School District resource officer was alerted to the child’s excessive absences. As the school investigated, officials learned the girl had been given to someone in Texas in exchange for a monkey; another witness separately said the foster parent and child simply were “not getting along.”
Lincoln County authorities contacted Texas law enforcement and spoke with the girl, who said she was fine despite having “been left alone in Texas for extended periods of time,” Wood said, including one 10-day stretch during which the person caring for her traveled to New Mexico.
Wood said Deutsch and her friend both owned exotic animals, and the friend had allegedly agreed to take the girl in exchange for the monkey. When that friend left for New Mexico, the child was moved to a second home belonging to the friend’s adult children.
“Both of those people are disabled and not able to take care of the child. From what we can tell the child was taking care of them,” Wood said. The girl was eventually turned over to Child Protective Services in Texas.
Citing anonymous sources, local outlet KMOV reported Deutsch had fostered more than 200 children over decades, with more than 200 prior hotline calls reporting abuse.
“Disappointed to learn that this particular home, despite the notoriety that it had gained, was not in our system,” Wood said. “We didn’t have any police reports. We didn’t have any requests for prosecution. We didn’t have anything.”
Deutsch faces up to seven years in prison. A case review is scheduled for July 21.