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AUGUST 24, 2011 | 11:03 AM










An Alaska woman faces up to a year in jail for pouring hot sauce down the throat of her young son and forcing him into a cold shower in an attempt to land a place on the "Dr. Phil" television show.




A jury in Anchorage convicted Jessica Beagley, 36, on a misdemeanor child abuse charge after viewing a videotape that Beagley had made. In the video, the boy -- one of two 5-year-old twins she and her husband adopted from Russia in 2008 -- is seen first being force-fed hot sauce and then crying loudly in a cold shower.




"There is no reason in the world why someone has to hurt a child to get on a reality show," prosecutor Cynthia Franklin told the jury in her closing argument.




The case has stirred an outcry in Russia, where reports of children suffering abuse after being adopted in the U.S. prompted Russian authorities last year to order a suspension in international adoptions.




That order followed the case of a Tennessee woman who put her 7-year-old adopted son unaccompanied on a flight back to Moscow with a note saying he had "severe psychopathic issues."




Russia's ombudsman for children's rights, Pavel Astakhov, estimated that 17 Russian children have died as a result of domestic violence in the U.S. since 1992.