Earlier that Friday afternoon, Priscilla Wagner had called home from work to check on her son. She talked to her live-in boyfriend, San Juan, who said the boy wasn't yet home from school.

Wagner asked San Juan to go look for him, and San Juan found Trevor and his friend playing at the elementary school.

In later court testimony, San Juan told police detective Michael Scott Beesley he was angry at Trevor for not coming straight home. He admitted to striking the boy several times on the chest. When they got home, the 6-foot, 230-pound San Juan told police he kicked Trevor in the buttocks and the boy fell, cutting his head along a wood strip at the bottom of a couch.

Seeing the blood on the boy's forehead also made San Juan angry, so he struck the 48-pound Trevor on the chest, causing him to fly backward and hit a wall.

San Juan ordered Trevor into the bathtub, where he found him unconscious minutes later.

He said he moved Trevor into the bedroom and attempted to resuscitate him. Then he apparently left the boy unconscious, police said. The child did not receive any medical attention for at least an hour, when Priscilla Wagner came home.

Trevor was barely awake when his mom arrived.

An autopsy revealed the boy's body was covered with bruises, and he had two partially fractured ribs and a head injury so severe doctors removed a portion of his skull to relieve pressure on the brain, assistant medical examiner Edward Leis testified.

Leis testified Trevor died from abusive head trauma inflicted by another person.

The Trevor Wagner case spotlights a philosophic difference in the way those in the arena see domestic violence cases.

One is from the position of the adult victim, the other from the perspective of children in violent households.

It's easy to see how domestic violence shelters — which support a woman's right to leave the shelter and return to a previously abusive partner — have very different goals than the state guardian ad litem's office, which represents children.

Tension between these two camps is not as bad in Utah as it is in some states, said Kristin Brewer, director of the Office of the Guardian ad Litem.

"Advocates for the adult victims of domestic violence often see the child advocates' suggestions or requirements that we see as necessary to protect the child as punitive or infringing on the adult victim," she said.

It is a quandary, said Asha Perek of the YWCA. The shelter has someone intervening on behalf of the children, but there is also a great deal of work with the adult victim on parenting issues, she said.

"We must see what we can do to empower battered women to be better parents," she said. "Because anything we can do toward that goal is better than taking the children away."