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| The home of suspect Isidro Garcia, the top floor, left apartment "G" is photographed in Bell Gardens, Calif., on Wednesday, May. 21, 2014. Garcia was arrested Wednesday for allegedly kidnapping a 15-year-old girl in Santa Ana in 2004 then repeatedly physically and sexually assaulting her over the course of 10 years. He was booked for kidnap for rape, and lewd acts with a minor and false Imprisonment. |
SANTA ANA, Calif.
(AP) -- A woman who disappeared as a teenager a decade ago was
reunited with her family after she went to police and told them her
mother's ex-boyfriend drugged and kidnapped her in 2004, forced her to
marry him and fathered her child.
Isidro
Garcia, 41, of Bell Gardens, was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping for
rape, lewd acts with a minor and false imprisonment, the Santa Ana
Police Department said.
Police described a
decade during which the woman - abused mentally, physically and sexually
by her captor - was moved at least four times and given multiple fake
identities to hide her from family and authorities.
According
to police, Garcia told her that her family had stopped trying to find
her, and that if she tried to contact them they would be deported to
Mexico. At first she was locked up, but she eventually began to lead
what appeared from the outside to be a normal life.
"Even
with the opportunity to escape, after years of physical and mental
abuse, the victim saw no way out of her situation," police said in a
written statement.
Neighbors were stunned,
describing the couple as seemingly happy. They doted on their young
daughter and liked to host parties at their apartment in the
working-class community of Bell Gardens, about 20 miles from where she
originally disappeared.
"He treats her like a queen. He does his best to do whatever she wants," next-door neighbor Maria Sanchez said in Spanish.
The
now-25-year-old woman, whose identity is not being released, first
contacted authorities Monday - the same day Garcia was first arrested.
Police said she came forward to police after finding her sister on
Facebook.
Santa Ana police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said his department's investigation concluded the following:
The
girl arrived from Mexico in February 2004 to join her mother and sister
in Santa Ana, about 30 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. She had
entered the United States illegally and spoke no English.
Garcia
was her mother's boyfriend. After one fight between the girl's mother
and Garica in August 2004, the girl's mother left the house and the
girl, then 15, went to a nearby park.
Garcia followed the girl. When he caught up with her, she said she had a headache and wanted to go home.
Garcia began threatening the girl and gave her five pills that he said would help her headache but instead knocked her out.
When the girl awoke, she was locked in a garage in Compton, a city between Santa Ana and Los Angeles.
The
mother "filed a police report and for 10 years (police) did due
diligence. But they were changing their names and dates of birth and
physical locations so that made it exceedingly difficult," Bertagna
said.
"You're talking about a 15-year-old girl that's in a new country," he said. "She's got nowhere to go."
In
2007, Garcia got documents from Mexico that gave the girl a new name
and date of birth. Using those documents, he married her at a
courthouse. He fathered a girl with her in 2012.
Garcia
secured two jobs for them on a night cleaning crew so he could keep
watch over her. She tried to escape twice but was severely beaten.
Recently,
she found her sister on Facebook and they started to communicate. She
also learned that her mother had indeed tried to find her, going to a
Spanish-language television station and newspaper in 2004.
She
started reflecting on her own child's situation and realized she needed
to leave, Bertagna said. On Monday, she went to police in Bell Gardens
and reported that she was a victim of domestic abuse. She also told them
of her abduction.
Police arrested Garcia on
Monday during a traffic stop in Bell Gardens. On Tuesday, Santa Ana
police arrested him on the kidnapping and other charges, and also
interviewed him.
Garcia was expected to be arraigned Thursday.
Neighbors
near Garcia's apartment in Bells Gardens said they were shocked by the
news. They knew the suspect as Tomas Madrano and described him as a
devoted family man who worked hard to provide for his wife and daughter.
They
said the couple was known in the neighborhood: He worked at a
food-service company down the street from their apartment while she
worked as a janitor at a nearby business. The couple attended church a
block away, and they were known for parties where they would hire
mascots and hold a raffle for children in the neighborhood.
"I'm
astounded she waited so long to say something," said Rita Salazar, who
lived across the street from the couple and said she never saw any signs
of trouble.
The case comes just over a year
after kidnapping and rape victims Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and
Michelle Knight, three women who had gone missing separately about a
decade earlier while in their teens or early 20s, were rescued from a
house in Cleveland.
Elizabeth Smart, who was
kidnapped from her Utah bedroom at 14 and held captive for nine months,
told The Associated Press that outsiders cannot know what victims are
going through and should not question why the woman didn't escape
sooner.
Smart, now 26, faced similar questions
after her 2002 ordeal. She was repeatedly sexually assaulted and her
captors moved her around Utah and California while threatening to kill
her family if she tried to save herself.
"We
don't know what these evil people are holding over them - whether it's
their families' lives, their lives, whatever it is," Smart said. "We
just don't know."
A prominent psychiatrist who
helped define Stockholm syndrome, in which victims of abduction begin
to sympathize with their captors, said determining why a victim resists
possible escape even when an opportunity is available is not an exact
science.
Dr. Frank Ochberg said the
relationship can sometimes involve a "trauma bond," whether it's a
physically abusive marriage or a kidnapping situation.
People
in this situation become "infantilized, dominated. They end up being
attached to the person who dominates them, much like a child," Ochberg
said.
Small gifts of kindness from a captor,
such as a bit of food or a trip to the bathroom, can create positive
feelings within the victim.
"Someone takes
away the fear, the isolation, and we have positive feelings," he said.
"That could be the beginning of a trauma bond."
In other cases, it can be more rational. "They know the risks of escape, and they don't want to take the risk," Ochberg said.
