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NEW YORK (CBS) ― Opening statements were underway this afternoon in the murder trial of the stepfather of Nixzmary Brown, the 7-year-old who prosecutors say was beaten and starved to death two years ago.

Prosecutors Wednesday described to jurors the prison that Brown lived in day in and day out. In their opening statements, attorneys told jurors the 7-year-old was repeatedly tied to a chair, bound like an animal, continuously beaten with fists and belts and forced to use a litter box to go to the bathroom.

The young girl's stepfather, Cesar Rodriguez, is being tried for her murder.

According to Rodriguez's attorney, Jeffrey Schwartz, however, his client is not the monster. Instead he points his finger at the child's mother.

"The mother brutalized, beat the daughter, and caused the daughter to go to the hospital with very similar injuries," Schwartz said. "The only difference and the only twist is she didn't kill her the first time, but she killed her the second time."

The fatal beating came after the child's mother apparently discovered a yogurt missing from the refrigerator, before Rodriguez discovered his computer printer was broken.

Prosecutors say Nixzmary was beaten that night, tossed under freezing cold water, then thrown on the floor, left to die.

"He disclipined the child when the mother asked him to," said Schwartz. "He didn't do it with ill intent, he didn't do it to hurt the child, he didn't do it to maim the child, and he definitely didn't do it to kill the child."

Brown's grandmother was silent as she made her way past the cameras for the first day of the trial, but she was not allowed to stay in the courtroom due to the fact she is being called as a witness.

The case shed light on the administration for children's services after the case fell through the cracks. In this case, child welfare workers had been at the home twice, yet reported no conclusive evidence of abuse.

There had been other warning signs for years before Brown died from a vicious blow to the head.

School employees had reported that she had been absent for weeks the previous year. Neighbors noticed unexplained injuries and noted the child appeared underfed and small for her age.

Nixzmary's personal hell is likely to be exposed at the trial through symbols of her horrific demise: the rope used to tether her to a chair, the cat-litter box she used as a toilet, the bathtub used to dunk her under cold water.

Authorities say evidence against her stepfather includes crime-scene photos in the family's three-bedroom apartment and a videotape of the defendant casting blame on the malnourished victim, who weighed 45 pounds at the time of her death.

"Sometimes she used to get me real angry and I used to just throw her," Rodriguez said during a post-arrest interview made public during a family court hearing.

Prosecutor Ama Dwimoh has called it a case of torture.

Nixzmary "was beaten repeatedly," Dwimoh said. "She was bound like an animal."

The case, coupled with a series of high-profile deaths of children known to child welfare workers, sparked a public outcry. City officials and lawmakers responded by bolstering the corps of caseworkers and drafting legislation to give life in prison without parole to parents who cause the death of a child under 14 through abuse.

Nixzmary's torment began making headlines shortly after Jan. 1, 2006, when her mother reported that she found the girl unconscious around 4 a.m. in a home where she was raising five other children, ages 6 months to 9 years. Nixzmary was dead at the scene.

Prosecutors allege that after the mother and Rodriguez were arrested, they found evidence Nixzmary had been confined to a ramshackle back room with the cat box. They also claim the stepfather incriminated himself by seeking to portray the victim as an unruly child who courted punishment by harassing her siblings and "always lying to me."

Rodriguez, 29, admitted on video that he restrained the girl "by putting duct tape on her hand and tying her to a chair."

On Nixzmary's final night, he said, she enraged him following the missing yogurt and broken computer printer debacle. The punishment: holding her under cold water, just like his father had punished him. Investigators believe that in the process, he hit her head on a faucet, delivering the death blow.

"She was giving me a hard time, so I pounded her on her back," the stepfather said in his version. Later, he added, "I laid her naked on the bed and told my wife to leave her alone for a while."

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)