A woman who is accused of assaulting her 15-month-old daughter aboard an Alaska Airlines flight to Honolulu has had other children taken away from her, a federal prosecutor says.

Samantha Leialoha Watanabe is charged with simple assault of a person younger than 16 years old, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a fine. It is a federal charge because the alleged assault happened during a flight.

A jury trial is scheduled to begin today in U.S. District Court.

The FBI says in court documents that Watanabe manhandled her daughter, repeatedly hit the toddler in the head and pulled out bits of the girl’s hair aboard a May 3 flight from Anchorage. The FBI says flight attendants saw Watanabe mistreat the girl even before the flight, when she jerked and lifted her daughter off the ground by the arm during boarding.

Watanabe’s lawyers are expected to argue that what witnesses saw did not happen as the FBI described, and that Watanabe was within her parental rights to discipline her child.

In a pretrial hearing last month, U.S. Magistrate Judge Kevin S.C. Chang ruled that the government cannot tell the jury about Watanabe’s history with state Child Welfare Services or that while getting off the plane at Honolulu Airport, Watanabe blurted out that she did not have other children taken away from her.

“There was a trial. Her children were removed from her home,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Marc Wallenstein had argued. Watanabe’s lawyers argued that without knowing why her children were taken away, the information is irrelevant to whether she abused the girl on the plane.

State Department of Human Services spokeswoman Keopu Reelitz said privacy and confidentiality laws prevent the department from divulging information about child welfare cases.

According to court records, a state attorney general child support hearings officer ordered Watanabe in March 2008 to pay $260 per month in child support for two sons and a daughter, who at that time were 10, 8 and 5 years old, respectively. The hearings officer also ordered Watanabe to provide for the children’s medical insurance.

In 2010 the hearings officer added a 2-1/2-year-old daughter to the order. Watanabe gave birth to a fifth child before having the girl she is accused of assaulting, and is pregnant with a seventh child.