Credit: Santa Ana Police via Reuters
A California woman who was kidnapped and held captive by her abductor for 10 years is finally free.
The 25-year-old woman, whose name has not been released, was kidnapped by her mother’s boyfriend when she was 15 years old, according to the Santa Ana Police Department.
Over the years, the man sexually assaulted the victim and forced her to marry him and bear his child, police said.
Isidro Garcia, 41, was arrested this week on suspicion of kidnapping, rape, lewd acts with a minor and false imprisonment, according to police.
The victim had arrived in the Santa Ana, California from Mexico in March 2004, The Los Angeles Times reports. She reunited with her mother who was living in an apartment with Garcia.
Police say Garcia physically abused the mother and soon began sexually abusing the daughter. One night in August 2004, Garcia beat the mother and the girl fled to a nearby park.
According to police, Garcia followed the girl, drugged her and drove to house in Compton. There, he provided her with falsified identity documents and locked her overnight in a garage.
The girl’s mother reported to police that her daughter went missing along with Garcia. The mother suspected that Garcia had been sexually abusing her daughter, but she didn’t have any evidence, police said.
Garcia and the victim moved around several times to avoid getting caught. He told the girl that her family members had stopped looking for her and that they would all be deported if she tried to contact them.
“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,” according to a police statement.
Police said Garcia frequently assaulted the victim physically and sexually. He forced her marry him in 2007 and she gave birth to his child in 2012.
Garcia also arranged for the two of them to work for a nighttime cleaning service together so he could keep a close eye on her.
The woman was freed after she contacted her sister on Facebook and then gained the courage to call authorities.
