A Minnesota woman will spend decades in prison for a horrifying and bizarre regime of abuse and torture perpetrated on her children, authorities announced this week.
According to the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office, Jorden Borders, 35, was convicted in June of all 11 charges against her, including one count of attempted murder, three counts of child torture, three counts of stalking, and four counts of theft by false representation.
Crow Wing County Judge Patricia Aanes sentenced her on Thursday to 468 months – just shy of 40 years – in state prison.
“Borders’ crimes are some of the most heinous and agonizing I have seen in my time as Attorney General,” Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement. “I am praying for her children’s recovery from the suffering and trauma they endured.”
Details about what the victims went through are particularly disturbing.
“Borders’ acts included, but were not limited to, engaging in medical child abuse by performing specific acts against her children that led to them presenting with false medical conditions to their medical providers,” the attorney general’s office stated in a press release. “This included Borders forcibly withdrawing blood from her then nine-year old child prior to his doctor’s visits with a syringe.”
The mother also used catheters to extract blood from her children, including a PICC line, which is inserted into smaller veins – typically on the arms – and a central line, which is inserted into major arteries – such as the chest or neck.
“Borders then presented the child at doctor’s visits and hospitals, where he was observed as having dangerously low hemoglobin levels,” according to the statement.
Law enforcement began investigating the defendant in May 2022, when the hemoglobin problem became unavoidable for staff at a children’s hospital. A search warrant was executed at the Borders home on Industrial Road in Crosslake, a small town located about 150 miles northwest of Minneapolis.
She was arrested in November 2022.
A probable cause affidavit describes the blood extraction procedure:
Child 2 who is nine years old was seen at the Children’s Hospital with the concern of his hemoglobin numbers dropping. Child 2 was monitored with the only explanation of his numbers dropping is that someone was removing blood from his body. Defendant said that the Hospital lab was removing too much blood from Child 2, however, during a forensic interview on 11/21/2022, the three children disclosed that they have observed Defendant withdraw blood from Child 2 frequently before doctors’ visits where he was being tested. The children furthermore disclosed that they were directed by Defendant to then flush the blood down the toilet and they were told by Defendant not to say anything.
…
Child 2 said he got really sick and had to go to the hospital and Defendant just “kept drawing my blood and blood and blood” [and] “she kept doing it and said don’t tell anyone.” … Child 2 said this made his body feel “sick-sleepy.”
Other examples of faking illness included forcing her children to wear boots, casts, and neck braces despite the fact that they had no identified fractures or diagnosed injuries, and self-diagnosing them with brittle bone disease. One child wore a cast for over two years.
“Another child stated that Borders would instruct the child to vomit at the doctor even though he didn’t need to, and to cough as if he had asthma, at which time asthma medication was prescribed,” according to the press announcement. “The defendant also forced one of the children to wear unprescribed hearing amplifiers, which led to the child developing a boil on the back of her ear.”
Physical abuse was not limited to medical settings. Borders’ three children all testified that they were beaten with charging cords, belts, and spoons, with one child claiming they were beaten with a cord until they bled.
The children also testified that their mother forced them to stand outside in the cold without clothing until their bodies burned, withheld food, and repeatedly threatened to kill them.
During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that the now-condemned woman’s reign of terror against children lasted approximately five years. Her three children suffered not only physical torment, but also verbal and emotional abuse.
The defendant was also found guilty of defrauding the Land of 10,000 Lakes Medicaid program out of $18,000, according to the AG’s office. This was accomplished by fabricating symptoms for one of her children and then claiming to be the child’s personal caregiver.
