A former Fayetteville woman employed by the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services was indicted earlier this month on charges that she beat her 8-year-old daughter with a belt multiple times.

Cylenthia Clark, who has moved to Atlanta, was indicted June 5 for one felony count of cruelty to children in the first degree. She is scheduled to be arraigned July 31, pleading either guilty or not guilty.

Clark at the time of her arrest was assistant director of the Fulton County DFCS office. She was moved to administrative duties after the arrest, and she displayed photos of the victim to an Atlanta television station to defend the punishment, which she said was in response to the child’s misbehavior at school.

The indictment accuses Clark of “maliciously ... causing cruel and excessive physical and mental pain by striking her while she was wearing only her underwear on the back, arms, legs, knees and face with a belt.”

A Fayette County Juvenile Court Judge ruled that the children were deprived but he did not order the children to be removed from the home. An existing order in the criminal case allows Clark to visit her four children only in supervised visits, but her attorney, Malcolm H.L. Wells of Jonesboro has filed a motion seeking unsupervised visits.

“Simply, the court found the children were in no danger, and contrary to DFCS claims were better off with their mother,” the motion states.

The children are living in Chicago with their father for now, The Citizen has learned.

Wells also filed a motion asking for the criminal case to be dismissed based on it being “unconstitutional, illegal, arbitrary, unreasonable, capricious or otherwise without probable cause.”