DELRAY BEACH -- In an emotional hearing, the local teenager whose viral catchphrase -- "Cash Me Ousside, How Bow Dat?" -- has brought her internet fame was placed on probation for five years.
Danielle Bregoli, a 14-year-old from Boynton Beach who appeared on daytime talk show "Dr. Phil" last year, plead guilty June 28 to charges of grand theft, grand theft auto, possession of marijuana and filing a false report. She was sentenced in Palm Beach County Court in Delray Beach.
Bregoli, at the center of a contentious custody battle between her mother and father, broke into tears in the courtroom as her father read a prepared statement to the judge, describing Bregoli's new-found fame as exploitation.
"I'm afraid of what she's being pushed into and who's profiting from it," said Bregoli's father, Ira Peskowitz. He asked that Bregoli's probation be carried out in Palm Beach County, where he works as a sheriff's deputy.
"She needs to be here in Palm Beach County," Peskowitz told the judge. "She needs to be taken away from this toxic environment."
Palm Beach County Circuit Judge Lou Delgado allowed the teen to carry out her probation in California, where she has been living for the past few months, her mother and attorney said in the courtroom.
That decision, said Peskowitz's attorney Robert Shalhoub, was disappointing to Peskowitz.
"How are you going to have the mother and father involved in therapy with the child, when two-thirds of that equation is not local?" Shalhoub said following the hearing.
The conditions of Bregoli's probation include a 5 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew, 100 hours of community service and attending school full time.
The judge also ordered Bregoli to take courses in sexual education, domestic violence and anti-theft.
Bregoli has "significantly changed" in the past year, a representative from the Juvenile Department of Justice said. Her grades and behavior have improved, and she twice cleared state-issued drug tests, one as recently as two weeks ago.
Following the television appearance that thrust her into fame, Bregoli spent time at Turn-About Ranch, a treatment program in Utah for troubled teens.
Her time at the ranch helped her build a healthy relationship with her mother, Bregoli said in court.
"It gives you time to think about what you did, why your parents sent you there," she said of her time at Turn-About Ranch.
Her mother, Barbara Ann Bregoli, added: "She did a lot of soul-searching at that ranch."
Bregoli's sentence stems from four separate arrests, the most recent of which happened in April after her time at Turn-About Ranch. She was found in a car with marijuana, according to the state attorney's office.
"I was with a friend I shouldn't have been with, a friend from my past ... " Bregoli said. "I regret it very much."
On three separate occasions last year, Bregoli allegedly stole her mother's purse, stole her mother's car and called the police to falsely report that her mother had been using heroin, according to the state attorney's office.
The false police report was filed in May 2016 when Bregoli reported a domestic battery involving her mother. When investigators arrived, the teen accused her mother of using drugs and pointed to powdered sugar scattered on a bathroom counter, describing it as heroin.
The teen admitted that the report was false.
Two additional charges were dismissed by the state attorney's office in June.
No comments:
Post a Comment