Mom in Child Beating Tape Pleads Not Guilty

Sept. 23 -- Madelyne Gorman Toogood, the mother who was videotaped striking her 4-year-old daughter in a shopping mall parking lot, pleaded not guilty today to a charge of felony battery to a child.

After her arraignment in a South Bend, Ind., court, Toogood's attorney Steven Rosen said the plea was only a formality. He said hoped he prosecutors will offer a plea arrangement that will keep her out of jail and allow her to be with her child.

"Of course, with facts of the case the way they are now, I am hopeful that a plea bargain would be offered by the prosecution which would entail aprobationary period, community service," Rosen said.

However, Rosen acknowledged that the videotape of Toogood could be practically insurmountable and that she would probably have to ask for the mercy of the court.

"We will probably enter a guilty plea and throw ourselves onthe mercy of the court," Rosen said. "If a jury has to sit in judgment of this lady, the jury is going to come back with a guilty verdict … I'm confronted with a videotape that shows Attila the Hun, no question about it."

Toogood, 25, told ABCNEWS' Good Morning America this morning that she hit her daughter, Martha, in the head and back, but did not punch her. She said she has no excuses for her actions.

"I slapped and pulled my daughter's hair," Toogood said. "There is no reason. There's nothing I can say that explains it, because it wasn't right."

"It's pretty much indescribable," Toogood said of the videotape that features her hitting her little girl.

But she says she's already paid a terrible price: "I just hope in some way it's going to stop, maybe, the next person, because it ain't worth it. My child's gone, my husband's devastated and my parents."

Toogood did not speak at her arraignment today. After the plea was entered, Rosen said he had spent time with Martha and knew she had been raised in a loving home.

"She is a fun-loving happy, very intelligent young lady and if she was an abused young girl, I think all of us could really tell."