A young California girl expressed her desire for her stepmother to die in court on Friday, moments before the woman was sentenced to nearly 15 years in prison, to the stepmother who had tormented her for several months.
According to a KTLA report, the young victim, who is now 11 or 12 years old, was observed in the courtroom with a glittering purple walker by her side as she read the impactful declaration to Mayra Chavez, 33, while reading from a handwritten victim statement. As a show of support, the girl was surrounded by family and friends dressed in her favored hue.
Chavez was convicted last month after being prosecuted by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. Furthermore, she was convicted of mistreating three additional children, two of whom were her own and one of her stepdaughters.
In 2022, when her father hurried her to the emergency room, the 10-year-old girl weighed a mere 50 pounds. The girl had self-inflicted injury by descending the stairs, according to her father, Domingo Junior Flores, who reported her unresponsiveness to authorities.
The young girl sustained a fractured bone in her neck, which protruded from an unhealed wound. The district attorney’s office added in a statement that she was covered in bruises from head to toe “as a result of months of increasingly humiliating and brutal cruelty.”
Officers were informed by one of the on-duty nurses that evening that the case of child abuse and trauma was the worst she had ever witnessed. The Anaheim Police Department arrested both parents while emergency room personnel labored to resuscitate the girl.
Zip ties were located throughout the couple’s Anaheim apartment when law enforcement officers conducted a search. Based on available records, law enforcement had been dispatched to the residence for a welfare check in the past, in response to family members’ concerns regarding the well-being of the girl.
Chavez was reportedly observed on police body cam footage from that visit “laughing and pointing to all of the food in the refrigerator and on the countertops” while being questioned by officers, according to KTLA.
Witnesses testified at trial that Chavez instructed the girl to knead on tin cans and uncooked rice while her legs and wrists were bound. In addition, while zip-tied, she was compelled to dive face-first into an icy cubicle. Additionally, the girl’s stepmother massaged a habanero pepper into her eyes.
Chavez, according to the testimony of the remaining three children, compelled them to fasten their sister to the bed using cable ties. Judge Scott Steiner of the Orange County Superior Court referred to Chavez as a “bridge troll” and a “demon” prior to his sentencing.
One felony count of torture, two felony counts of child abuse and endangerment, one misdemeanor count of felony child abuse and endangerment, and one felony enhancement of causing severe bodily injury are charges against Flores, who is currently awaiting trial.
“This household normalized this methodical and evil torture of children to the point where these children believed it was their fault for being abused,” said Todd Spitzer, the district attorney of Orange County, in a prepared statement. “The system neglected this young girl.” Her siblings were failing by the system. Although assistance was readily available on the other side of the door, it failed to arrive for this young girl until it was nearly too late, on multiple occasions.
“Despite all of the horror these children had to endure and the darkness that they were forced to live in, they are the true personification that good will always overpower evil and that light will eradicate darkness,” Spitzer stated. “We will get to the bottom of how this happened and what can be done to prevent another child from suffering the fate of what these children suffered at the hands of the very people who were supposed to protect them.”
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