WEST HARTFORD – A local woman on probation for assaulting her daughters has been arrested again for assaulting the girls, police said.

Sandra Cedeno, 31, of South Quaker Lane, is charged with two counts of second-degree assault and two counts of risk of injury to a minor for allegedly beating her daughters with a metal broom handle. She was arrested Nov. 2 and posted $5,000 bail.

According to the warrant for her arrest, the social worker at Conard High School contacted the state Department of Children and Families to report the girls were being abused by their mother. A DCF investigator interviewed the girls, who said their mother had struck them in the head, back and arms with the metal broom handle for violating house rules.

One daughter was struck, she told the investigator, because she took food to her bedroom. The other was struck because her mother found that she had chewing gum, which could damage her braces.

After the DCF official substantiated the abuse, Conard’s social worker contacted Officer Arthur Yepes, who is the school resource officer at Conard. Yepes wrote in the application for an arrest warrant that he could see bruises on each girl. One had bruises on her left shoulder, face and left hand. The other had bruises on her right arm and hand.

After speaking with the girls at the school, Yepes immediately went to Cedeno’s home to interview her and sent another officer to another town school to check on another child.

Cedeno admitted to Yepes that she’d struck the girls with the metal broom. When Yepes asked where the broom was, Cedeno said she’d thrown it out. He found the broom, which was bent and cracked, in a trash can and seized it as evidence.

Yepes said he then asked Cedeno why she hit the children. Cedeno began to cry, then said “They get me so mad, they don’t listen.”

Cedeno was arrested on two counts of second-degree assault and two counts of risk of injury to a minor last December for beating her daughters with a wood dowel the size of a broom handle. She was arrested after her daughters complained to counselors at their school.

In that case, police said there were welts and bruises on the arms of both girls. During their investigation of the first incident, police said school officials told them they had long suspected the girls were being abused — while they were students at their middle school and when they attended elementary school. Police were never notified of the abuse. School officials told police the girls gave plausible answers when asked about the suspected abuse, police said at the time.

In the December case, the felony charges of second-degree assault and risk of injury to a minor were reduced to misdemeanor charges of first-degree reckless endangerment and third-degree assault. Cedeno pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a suspended one-year jail term and two years of probation.

The new arrest could lead to an additional criminal charge of violation of probation.

Cedeno’s attorney, John F. O’Brien, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.

SOURCE: http://www.courant.com/community/west-hartford/hc-web-west-hartford-assault-1112nov11,0,3954127.story

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