Domingo Flores laughed when Anaheim law enforcement officials visited his condo to test on his 10-year-old daughter.
The officers didn’t comprehend it, however the woman was zip-tied to a mattress in a again room on the time, in response to the Orange County district lawyer’s workplace. For years, the woman’s father and stepmother, Mayra Chavez, tortured the woman and her older sister, authorities stated.
The couple have been convicted and sentenced to jail in November and April for his or her merciless acts in opposition to the woman and her sibling, however a lawsuit filed by the woman’s organic mom seeks to carry the county and metropolis of Anaheim accountable for the years of torture her daughters endured.
The lawsuit doesn’t identify the 2 women — ages 10 and 13 — however highlights the torture inflicted on the youthful sister.
Chavez and Flores plunged the woman’s head into ice baths, rubbed a pepper in her eye and repeatedly tortured her whereas denying her meals, prosecutors stated throughout a prison trial final yr.
The woman’s relations initiated the welfare test, in response to the lawsuit, however the particulars about their considerations are unclear.
However the lawsuit alleges that when Anaheim police visited Flores’ condo to analyze, they didn’t intervene to cease the kind of graphic torture that the jurors heard in the course of the trial. As an alternative, when police confirmed up, Flores laughed and pointed to meals within the fridge and on the counter tops of his condo, in response to the D.A.’s workplace.
A lawsuit accuses Anaheim police of failing to totally examine throughout a welfare test on two younger women who have been being abused by their father and stepmother in 2022.
(Mark Boster / Los Angeles Instances)
The officers by no means met with the woman throughout their welfare name on June 13, 2022, and the Police Division didn’t comply with up with Orange County’s little one safety company in regards to the go to, in response to the lawsuit filed in February by the women’ mom, Arely Perez.
County social employees didn’t correctly examine the studies of bodily abuse inflicted on Flores’ two daughters, in response to the lawsuit. Some studies of abuse weren’t investigated in any respect, and when there was any follow-up reporting, social employees didn’t comply with regular procedures to find out if the kids have been protected or wanted to be faraway from the house, Perez stated.
“There have been investigations that occurred, however there was no significant motion taken,” Perez’s lawyer, Roger Sales space, stated in an interview Tuesday. The lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court docket in February was first reported by the Orange County Register.
Reviews of abuse within the Flores family dated again to 2017, after Perez and Flores separated, in response to Sales space. However the state of affairs got here to a head in December 2018, when the women stayed with their mom over the vacations.
The women defined to her the sorts of abuse they skilled from their father and stepmother, prompting Perez to refuse to ship her daughters again to their father, in response to the criticism.
The courtroom stepped in and ordered police to take the women to an emergency county middle for abused youngsters in February 2019. The D.A.’s workplace requested the juvenile courtroom to take away the women from their father’s house as a result of allegations of ongoing abuse, in response to the lawsuit.
However county workers finally determined to return the women to their father’s custody and requested to dismiss the D.A.’s request, Perez stated. This resolution was made even after the women elaborated on the abuse they endured of their father’s house, in response to the lawsuit.
The women remained of their father’s house for years after their time within the county facility.
“It was torture that went on for 3 further years,” Sales space stated.
Then in August 2022, only a few months after the June welfare test by Anaheim police, Flores and Chavez rushed the 10-year-old to Youngsters’s Hospital of Orange County, claiming she fell down a flight of stairs. The woman was unconscious and weighed solely 50 kilos, in response to prosecutors.
She had intensive accidents all through her physique that have been per years of “brutal abuse and extreme neglect,” Perez stated. Chavez and Flores have been arrested following the hospital go to.
Prosecutors stated the 10-year-old suffered a damaged neck, a bone protruding from an unhealed sore and bruises throughout her physique. She was severely malnourished and unable to stroll on her personal after she was resuscitated on the hospital.
Six youngsters lived with Chavez and Flores on the time of their arrest, together with the 2 daughters and Chavez’s 4 organic youngsters.
Throughout Chavez’s prison trial, her organic youngsters testified about being compelled to restrain their stepsister to a mattress so Chavez may proceed to abuse her, in response to the D.A.’s workplace.
In November, an Orange County jury discovered Chavez responsible and he or she was sentenced to seven years to life in jail, plus a further seven years and 10 months for torturing the woman, little one abuse and endangerment, assault and different costs. She was additionally discovered responsible of abusing her different stepdaughter and two of her organic youngsters. Flores pleaded responsible in April to little one abuse, assault and several other different costs. He was sentenced to 14 years in jail, in response to courtroom data.
The women reside in California with their mom, who now has custody.
On Tuesday, Anaheim spokesperson Mike Lyster stated the town was within the early phases of reviewing the lawsuit and couldn’t reply to the precise allegations.
“This was an incomprehensible case of kid cruelty,” Lyster stated. “Whereas justice is tough to totally come by in a case like this, we at the very least have seen prison convictions of Chavez and Flores, who misled many and bear sole accountability for this horrendous tragedy.”
A spokesperson for the Orange County Social Providers Company declined to remark, citing pending litigation.
After Chavez’s sentencing in November, Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer stated the “system failed this little woman.”
“The system failed her siblings,” Spitzer stated in an announcement. “Assist was on the opposite facet of the door, however over and over, assist didn’t come for this little woman till it was nearly too late.”
He promised to “unravel how this occurred and what might be achieved to forestall one other little one from struggling the destiny of what these youngsters suffered by the hands of the very individuals who have been supposed to guard them.”
