Mom accused of torturing children with blowtorch pleads guilty

DALE COUNTY, Ala (WDHN) — An Ariton woman accused of beating and burning her children with a blowtorch will spend the next five years in an Alabama prison.

In June, Ashleigh Ableman pled guilty to charges of aggravated child abuse and chemical endangerment of a child and was sentenced to five years in prison, followed by five years of supervised probation.

Ableman was arrested in October 2023 after Dale County Sheriff’s Investigators accused her of burning three of her children with a blowtorch several times.

At the time of her arrest, Lt. Caroline Jackson with the DCSO told WDHN the burns were severe, and the children had signs of other kinds of abuse.

Court indictments claim that over approximately four years, Ableman also hit her children in the face with a leather belt, beat one of her children in Geneva County, and exposed her 4-year-old to methamphetamine and marijuana.

Ableman was taken into custody alongside her boyfriend, 53-year-old Howard Anderson.

Anderson has a tentative trial date of September 9.

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