LOGAN, Ohio - The unwashed men's underwear that an angry grandmother forced into her 11-year-old granddaughter's mouth was not soiled with feces as she told the girl, but that hardly mattered. The girl was so frightened and disgusted that she vomited.

LOGAN, Ohio � The unwashed men�s underwear that an angry grandmother forced into her 11-year-old granddaughter�s mouth was not soiled with feces as she told the girl, but that hardly mattered. The girl was so frightened and disgusted that she vomited.

Lick it up, Karen L. Sharpe told her granddaughter as the girl threw up.

Hocking County Common Pleas Judge John T. Wallace listened to all of this yesterday and then told Sharpe that what she did was child abuse that deserves prison time.

He sentenced Sharpe, 54, of New Straitsville, to three years in prison, the maximum penalty for the third-degree felony of endangering children, after Sharpe pleaded guilty to one count. She initially pleaded not guilty to kidnapping and two counts of child endangering but took a negotiated plea agreement to spare her granddaughters the trauma of a trial.

Her 13-year-old granddaughter recorded the abuse of the 11-year-old on Jan. 19 on her telephone and provided three videos to authorities. Sharpe admitted abusing the 11-year-old as punishment for stepping on her injured foot.

�There was no fecal material in the underwear. She made the child believe that (there was),� K. Robert Toy, Sharpe�s attorney, said in court. �She is remorseful, she is sorry. She did not have the best parenting skills, obviously.�

�There was, at least, psychological harm,� Wallace told her. �Ms. Sharpe, the children needed you desperately. You were a safe harbor. Things didn�t work out. The sentence needs to reflect that.�

Sharpe had custody of her two granddaughters for about three years because they had been abused by their parents. They have the same mother and different fathers, Toy said.

Sharpe was raised in an abusive household, endured an abusive marriage and has health problems that include diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure, Toy and Sharpe�s daughter, Brandi Cooper, told the judge.

�She was trying to do right� by her granddaughters, but her age, illness and lack of parenting skills got in the way, said Cooper, who is not the girls� mother.

Sharpe, who sat in a wheelchair and was tethered to the oxygen tank that Toy said she uses around the clock, wept as she listened to her daughter.

�I accept responsibility for my actions,� she told the judge. �I love my grandchildren. I apologize to them.�

The older granddaughter, who was allegedly punched by her grandmother and has a steel plate in her head from abuse by another adult, had begun to secretly record her grandmother and had her telephone ready on Jan. 19 when Sharpe cursed at and attacked the younger girl, Sgt. Ed Downs of the Hocking County sheriff�s office has said.

Assistant County Prosecutor William Archer said the grand jurors who indicted Sharpe were shocked at what they saw.

�The conduct shocks the conscience on how someone could treat a child this way,� Archer said. � This young lady is going to carry the scars of this incident for quite some time.�

The girls now live with other relatives, Toy said.

mlane@dispatch.com

@MaryBethLane1