A woman, who vanished from her home in Santa Ana, California nearly a decade ago when she was just 15-years-old, has been found. She told police that she had been kidnapped and held hostage in places such as garages, and sexually assaulted multiple times.
Isidro Garcia was arrested Tuesday and booked on suspicion of kidnapping for rape, lewd acts with a minor and false imprisonment, Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Betagna told reporters.
The victim, who has not been identified and is 25 now, called the police nearly 10 years after she disappeared from her house.
The victim was reported missing by her mother in August of 2004. The mother reported that her daughter went missing along with her cohabitant boyfriend, Garcia, after a domestic violence incident. The mother had suspected Garcia of sexually abusing her daughter, but at the time she had no evidence to support this belief.
The victim said a few months before being abducted, that Garcia had begun sexually assaulting her. In August of 2004, after Garcia assaulted her mother, he drugged the 15-year-old daughter and drove her to a house in Compton, located 26 miles away from victim's home. There she was locked in a garage and was given falsified identity documents to avoid being detected, police said in a release.
"Over the course of the following months and years, Garcia repeatedly told the victim her family had given up looking for her, and if she tried to go back to them, the family would be deported," police said.
The two changed locations in several occasions to avoid police detection. Garcia also arranged for the two of them to receive employment at a night cleaning service, so he could keep a close eye on the young girl.
"Even with the opportunity to escape, after years of physical and mental abuse, the victim saw no way out of her situation and lived a life with Garcia under sustained physical and mental abuse," police said adding that Garcia forced the victim into a marriage and in 2012, the two had a child.
The victim contacted her sister via Facebook and eventually mustered the courage to contact the police.
