Orange City, Iowa — A judge has approved a motion by the state that the defendants not be present during depositions in the case in which a Hawarden 11-year-old told a teacher he was being abused.
According to court records, authorities believe that on at least three separate occasions, 35-year-old Matthew Spaans of Hawarden abused his 11-year-old stepson, causing injuries. Authorities also believe the child’s mother, 33-year-old Nina Spaans told the boy to make up stories about how the injuries were received.
Both Matthew and Nina Spaans are charged with three counts each of Child Endangerment Causing Bodily Injury, a class D felony, and have pled “not guilty.”
A hearing was held on Monday, August 21st. Sioux County Attorney Thomas Kunstle says the hearing was to decide if the parents could be excluded from physical presence during the recording of video discovery depositions of an 11-year-old and a 14-year-old. Kunstle says he thinks their presence would have inhibited the minors’ answers.
Also, Kunstle says this is not for trial video depositions — only for the pretrial discovery depositions. It’s a different process and is harder to exclude somebody from a trial, he says.
Judge Edward Jacobson approved the protective discovery order on Tuesday, excluding the defendants from being present during the pretrial depositions.
