The woman convicted of incest with her 16-year-old biological son was sentenced Wednesday in Napa County Superior Court to more than four years in state prison.
Mistie Rebecca Atkinson, 32, of Lake County, received four years, eight months in state prison under a plea agreement reached in May. Atkinson pleaded no contest to incest, oral copulation, lewd contact with a minor and distribution of lewd material to a minor.
The charges were filed in Napa County Superior Court because most of the offenses were committed in Napa, the Napa County district attorney’s office said in May.
In a hand-written letter to the court, Atkinson pleaded for leniency, saying she never intended to become intimate with her biological son.
“I don’t feel like I should have the charge of incest because there is something called genetic attraction that is a very powerful (phenomenon) that happens to 50 (percent) of people becoming reunited with a long-lost relative,” she wrote in her letter to the judge.
The investigation started in October when the son’s Napa relatives reported inappropriate Facebook messages between him and his biological mother, who had been out of his life since he was 2, according to court records.
In February, Ukiah police met with the boy’s grandmother and other relatives who alleged Atkinson was having an incestuous relationship with the son. The boy, who was described as “out of control” by police, was staying with a relative in Ukiah until he could be placed in a group home, according to court documents.
The father had sent the boy to Ukiah partly in an effort to separate him from his biological mother, authorities reported in Atkinson’s probation report.
The grandmother alleged the boy was sneaking out of his relative’s house to meet with Atkinson in spite of a restraining order barring the woman from contacting the boy, authorities said in the court filing.
Atkinson was arrested in April in a motel room in Mendocino County with the boy, police said.
