
From staff reports
WILLIAMSPORT — Breanna Diane Long, 21, formerly of Lock Haven, was sentenced to 11 to 23 months in the Lycoming County Prison, charged with endangering the welfare of children.
The sentence, handed down by Lycoming County Judge Nancy Butts on Tuesday morning, also includes three years of probation during which time she must get her GED, attend alcohol and mental health treatment and perform 50 hours of community service.
Long, dressed in prison garb, left the courtroom in handcuffs and was transported to the county jail.
She pled guilty to the charge on Aug. 31, just days after Brett A. Fields, 25, the man with whom she formerly lived, was sentenced to 6 to 12 years in state prison in the child abuse case.
After Long’s plea, it was recommended she serve from 3 to 12 months.
However, earlier this week, the adoptive mother of Long’s three young sons, Danielle Marr, presented the court with an online petition with nearly 300 signatures urging the judge to impose a longer sentence for Long.
In the end, the sentence was 11 to 23 months.
The couple was living in Trout Run, Lycoming County, when they were arrested in March 2017, and the three little boys were put under the care of Lycoming County Children and Youth.
Long admitted violating the duty to care for her three young sons by failing to properly feed and bathe them.
She also was accused of keeping the children in wet and dirty diapers, not reporting physical abuse by Fields and leaving them for several weeks with caretakers she did not know well.
Long testified at Fields’ preliminary hearing that he had thrown her then 18-month-old son across a room and had hit him with a closed fist and open hand multiple times.
She also said Fields would hit her son in his crib and pick him up by the armpits when he was angry.
Long is the mother of all three boys, but Fields fathered only one of them.
Both relinquished parental rights to the children, now aged 2, 3 and 4.
Danielle and Chad Marr of Lock Haven adopted them.