The offenses the girls committed are typical of tweens and early teens, including stealing, lying, wetting the bed and coming home late.

But the punishments the girls faced show a creative streak that prosecutors allege crossed the line into crimes.

Monica Y. Williams, 52, of 1326 Roemer Blvd., Farrell, heard her daughters testify against her at a preliminary hearing Tuesday, and District Judge Ronald E. Antos, Farrell, held for court charges of three counts of endangering welfare of children.

The girls, now ages 17, 14 and 13, said they were spanked with implements that included belts, shoes and plastic ball bats; and made to hold buckets of water over head, run steps and go to school in clothes wet with urine.

The girls were adopted in the summer of 2002, after having lived with Ms. Williams for two years.

Shortly after the adoption was finalized, the spankings began, sometimes leaving welts and, once, leaving a scar, said the oldest girl.

Concerning the water bucket punishment, the girl said, “Sometimes you held it until you counted to 50 slow. Sometimes you didn’t know when to stop.”

On occasion, Ms. Williams went to bed before she told the punished girl to put the buckets down, the girl said.

“She would usually go to bed and have one of my sisters watch me,” the youngest girl said.

If a girl dropped her arms or a bucket, she was spanked or made to hold the buckets longer, the oldest girl said.

The middle girl said she was once wrongly accused of drinking juice from a container out of the refrigerator, and was made to drink the rest of it mixed with powdered milk. She eventually threw it back up.

“When I threw it up into it (pitcher) I was forced to drink it,” the girl said.

She said she drank “a little” of the vomit, and was then allowed to dump the rest down the toilet.

She also said that her punishments for bed wetting included being forced to sleep in the hall or on the toilet, wear wet clothes or wet diapers to school, or to drink water until she wet herself without being allowed to change clothes.

All three of the girls wet the bed at some point, and the oldest girl said she would do so on purpose because she did not want to walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night.