A Richmond man was arrested Thursday for abusing his 1-year-old daughter — the fourth child abuse arrest in Madison County in the past several weeks.

Jeremiah Caleb Blair, 23, of Foxhaven Drive, was arrested last week after a two-month-long investigation into allegations of abuse. Blair is charged with one count of first-degree criminal abuse allegedly for choking his daughter.

“The investigation began when the 1-year-old child was brought into St. Joseph Berea Hospital with bruises on her neck,” a Richmond Police press release states. “The bruising was consistent with injuries inflicted by another party. The child also suffered other injuries to her head area.”

Richmond Police Sgt. Willard Reardon would not go into details of the child’s injuries out of consideration for the victim. The child spent the night with Blair, her non-custodial father, Reardon said, and her injuries were discovered after she was returned to her mother. The abuse allegations were not the first time Richmond Police have been contacted with concern for the child, Reardon said.

“We had an ongoing investigation from a couple of months ago,” Reardon said. “This was just recent and that just kind of gave us the evidence to open the case to the point where we could act on it. A lot of times we get those kind of cases where people have alleged stuff and there’s not much we can do until we get evidence.”

Madison County has seen a string of child abuse cases recently. In early February, Regina Isaacs and her boyfriend Robert Castle were arrested on allegations that Isaacs 4- and 6-year-old daughters and 10-year-old son were being spanked by the couple with wooden paint stirrers and belts, leaving red marks and bruising. During a preliminary hearing in Madison District Court, RPD Detective Eric Long testified that the children also were made to stand in the corner for up to two hours as punishment for “breathing.”

“When they got out, they were spanked and put back in the corner for an additional hour,” Long testified.

Additionally, Castle is charged with first-degree sexual abuse and promoting a minor (younger than 16 years of age) in a sexual performance. Long testified that the charges stem from complaints made by Isaacs’ 4-year-old daughter.

Last week, Tara Farley was charged with smothering and choking her 8-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter while she was drunk.

Farley’s son told Madison County Sheriff’s Detective Scotty Anderson that he “was smacked in the face with a shoe,” Anderson said. “He had redness to his nose and cheek area and some scratches to his face. He said, ‘Mommy choked me,’ and it looked to me like he had a fingernail mark in-between his collar bones. He had a couple of scratches down his chest just below the scratch on his neck.

“He said when she got done choking him, she took a pillow and held him down and was smothering him,” Anderson said.

Another couple, Verona “V.J.” Brinegar and Ronald “Ronnie” Crabtree are less than a month away from a trial in which a jury will decide if they beat, burned and smothered Brinegar’s 2-year-old daughter, Callie Robinson. A Madison grand jury recently returned a superseding indictment charging the couple with criminal abuse in addition to the murder charges.

Reardon said there was not one thing he could point to that seems to have made these cases more prevalent, but agreed there had been an increase in complaints received by social services and the department’s child abuse section.

“I think they are coming to light more often than what they used to be,” he said. “In years past, child abuses cases were one of those things we didn’t have much of. It is an unreported crime a lot of times because a lot of times it deals with family and people don’t necessarily want to get involved.”

Blair was lodged in the Madison County Detention Center and was released on a $1,000 cash bond.

Kelly Foreman can be reached at kforeman@richmondregister.com or 624-6694