A month in the workhouse is the sentence for an Eden Prairie man who locked his teen daughter in a bedroom and whipped her roughly 30 times with a tree branch and a belt, leaving bloody and bruised wounds over much of her body.

Craig D. Underwood II, 38, was sentenced Wednesday in Hennepin County District Court after pleading guilty to gross-misdemeanor malicious punishment of a child for his attack on the girl in November after she was late for class and came home from school on Nov. 15 with someone her family disliked.

The sentence imposed by Judge Martha Anne Holton Dimick includes the opportunity for Underwood to serve his time under electronic home monitoring and while on work release. Five months of work release was stayed as he serves two years' supervised probation.

Underwood's criminal history in Minnesota includes convictions for domestic assault and drug possession.

The father made the girl put on shorts, locked her in a bedroom, cut a branch off a tree and "hit her approximately 30 times with both the switch and a belt," according to county child-protection filings.

She told the investigator that her parents would drink alcohol and be joined by her 17-year-old brother to smoke marijuana in front of the other children. She said her father drank daily and has driven drunk with her in the vehicle. The other children told the investigator they get whipped with a belt or spanked with a hand.

On the day the girl was assaulted, police saw she had swollen hands, fresh lashing injuries, and bleeding and scrapes up and down her legs. She said her father beat her with a tree branch and a belt.

A court-ordered search of the home by a police detective that night turned up a tree branch with black hairs "embedded/attached," a court filing revealed.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482