Editor’s note: This story contains graphic descriptions of violence and abuse.
On Thursday, Danielle Dauphinais shed tears in court.
The Merrimack mother who tortured, starved, and beat her five-year-old son Elijah Lewis, 5, repeatedly over the course of a year, the woman whose neglect left Elijah with open festering sores on his body, the woman who withheld food to the extreme point that Elijah lost close to half his body weight and was left unable to walk or sit up, the woman who callously exposed Elijah to her fentanyl and left him poisoned by the deadly drug, the woman who finally bashed Elijah’s head against a tiled bathroom wall and then celebrated his death…