FULTON - A 7-year-old boy testified on a videotape played today for jurors that he remembered his mother and stepfather putting him in a hot shower and his stepfather pointing the spray at him as he tried to avoid the hot water.

Ed Pfueller photo

Otis McKinney listens to opening statements by public defender Richard French at McKinney’s trial yesterday in Fulton on charges that he assaulted and abused his stepson. The trial was moved from Boone County on a change of venue.

"I was in the hot shower for a long time," the boy said on the videotape. "He was turning the knob on me."

The videotape was played during the trial of Otis McKinney, 40, of Columbia who is accused with his wife of repeatedly punishing his stepson by placing him in a hot shower.

The boy, who now lives in foster care, scratched his back and often squirmed in his seat while answering questions from lawyers on the tape. Sometimes he covered his ears with his arms and lowered his chin to his chest, rubbed his eyes or scratched his head.

Boone County Assistant Prosecutor Richard Hicks asked him on the tape: "Sometimes Mom" put him in the hot shower?

"Yes," the boy said.

"Sometimes Dad?" Hicks asked.

Ed Pfueller photo

Boone County Assistant Prosecutor Richard Hicks makes opening statements to jurors yesterday as Judge Gene Hamilton, background, presides over McKinney’s trial.

"Yes," the boy said.

"Sometimes they both put you in there?"

"Yes," the boy said.

In a trial moved from Columbia on a change of venue, McKinney is charged with first-degree assault, felony child abuse and two counts of child endangerment for injuries the boy suffered last year as a 6-year-old. He required skin grafts on his back and arms.

In a trial without a jury last week, Circuit Judge Gary Oxenhandler found 35-year-old Erma McKinney guilty of related charges and set sentencing July 17.

In an opening statement yesterday, Hicks said that although Erma McKinney turned on the hot water in an incident described by her son, Otis McKinney directed the nozzle toward the boy as the child tried to dodge the searing liquid.

To make matters worse, Hicks told jurors, the couple prolonged the child’s suffering by refusing to get him medical attention for nearly a month after his injuries, hiding the boy’s misery by telling family and friends he had chicken pox and mumps.

When the McKinneys took their son to University Hospital 3½ weeks later, emergency room physicians were unable to identify the large open wounds on the boy’s back and arms. "They had never seen anything like it," Hicks said.

Public defender Richard French told jurors in an opening statement that his client was a hard-working father of two whose wife was mishandling their money and abusing her son. During their five-year marriage, Otis McKinney maintained two jobs, often working 15 hours a day, French said.

Erma McKinney was losing control of the household and her life, and although Otis McKinney tried to intervene, it was to no avail, French said.

"Otis depended on her to do the things he asked," French said.

At one point, French said, Erma McKinney was accused of writing more than $5,000 in bad checks and her husband didn’t learn she wasn’t paying the bills until their electricity was turned off. He also said his client began to notice that his stepson was biting and slapping himself, and he urged his wife to get him help, which she promised to do.

French said that in 2002, Otis McKinney "received an unexpected shock" when an investigator from the Missouri Department of Family Services visited him after child-care workers noticed "red linear lines" on the boy’s back.

The child told investigators his stepfather had hit him with a belt, French said. But eventually, Erma McKinney confessed to hitting the boy with a switch.

"The case was closed when Erma promised to get counseling," French said in his opening statement.

Testifying yesterday, Columbia police Detective Bryan Liebhart described the stepfather differently. Liebhart interviewed Otis McKinney in June, two days after emergency room workers became suspicious of the injuries.

More than an hour into the interview, Liebhart testified McKinney admitted that his wife had put the boy in a hot shower because the child had come home from school with a bad report. McKinney told the detective he could recall at least 10 or 11 times that his wife used a hot shower to punish the child. He also admitted punishing the boy three times with a hot shower.