The details of child abuse alleged in the case are so sickening even the judge was shocked by what he heard.

The 12-year-old Sacramento girl allegedly was beaten, burned with a clothing iron, starved for a week at a time and forced to stand on one leg for hours.

Her accused tormenter, Duewa Abeana Lee, 35, made her second appearance in Sacramento Superior Court on Thursday in what is emerging as one of the region's worst nonfatal child abuse cases in recent memory.

Lee is accused of systematically torturing her boyfriend's daughter between July 28 and Sept. 30, a period during which the girl's father was in jail and ultimately was sent to state prison.

"It was at that point that Ms. Lee began her reign of terror on this little girl," prosecutor Nancy Cochrane said during a bail hearing before Judge Lawrence G. Brown.

Lee had been ordered held on $2 million bail last week, but returned to court in hope of getting bail reduced to $500,000. Her attorney, John Casey, said that was all the family could afford.

Lee has yet to enter a plea, but documents show she has denied the abuse allegations to detectives.

"I appreciate the extraordinary and unusual circumstances of this case," Casey told the judge as he explained why Lee is not a flight risk or a danger to anyone.

The girl and the other children with whom she lived – acquaintances say Lee has six kids of her own and is pregnant with another – are in protective custody, and Lee would have no access to them, Casey noted.

"My client is 35 years old, and she has no convictions for crimes of violence that I'm aware of, or even arrests that I'm aware of for crimes of violence," Casey said.

He said Lee's sister in Southern California is an attorney in good standing with the State Bar of California.

The prosecutor was having none of it.

In a precise recitation of the injuries the girl allegedly suffered, Cochrane described Lee heating a spatula on the stove, then pressing it on the girl's buttocks.

As the girl's aunt and other family members wept in the courtroom, Cochrane said Lee used a clothing iron to burn the girl's back and stapled her left ear to her head, then ripped the staple out to permanently disfigure her with a "cauliflower ear."

Cochrane said the girl suffered a broken tooth, was forced to stand in a corner on one leg while holding her hands above her head until she collapsed, and was forced to sleep naked on a bare wooden floor.

Lee allowed the girl to have food only once a week, Cochrane said, adding that when she begged for nourishment, Lee's response was, "You can starve."

The girl was saved, the prosecutor said, when she broke away from Lee at a DMV office last month and told a stranger, "I am being abused."

She was taken to UC Davis Medical Center, Cochrane said, where she had severe internal injuries and bruises all over her body.

"She was so hungry she couldn't stop eating at the hospital," the prosecutor said.

She asked Brown to increase Lee's bail to $3 million.

Cochrane was taking no chances on the outcome. Before the hearing, Brown was given crime scene photos of the girl's injuries to review in his chambers, which he said were "photos I won't soon forget."

"This case involves allegations of incomprehensible cruelty to an innocent little girl," the judge said as he agreed to the $3 million bail amount.

For most of the hearing, Lee, dressed in orange-and-white jail garb, stood in a corner of the steel cell inside the courtroom, looking downward.

The next court hearing was set for Nov. 14, but other legal wheels already are in motion. The girl's grandmother, Ella McQuater, said she is seeking custody of the child, whom she says she raised for about 10 years.

"It just hurts my heart. I can't believe it; it's like a nightmare," McQuater said. "I can't believe someone can do a child so cruel."

The girl's uncle, Melvin Smith, said the family derived some satisfaction from Thursday's bail increase. But the allegations in the case haunt him.

"It's terrible, it's terrible. You don't do a dog like that," he said. "That's a child, a child comes first. It's always supposed to be that way."

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