Kidnapped woman 'lived ordinary life'
By Gillian Flaccus And Tami Abdollah AP May 23, 2014, 9:58 am
A US woman who says she was kidnapped a decade ago by her mother's boyfriend lived a seemingly ordinary life with her alleged captor year after year, but was too scared to go to authorities until she recently reunited with her mother, police say.
The woman, who disappeared when she was 15, eventually married the man and started a family with him.
Prosecutors in California have filed five felony charges against the alleged abductor, Isidro Garcia, including rape and kidnapping to commit a sexual offence.
He was jailed on $1 million bail.
Garcia's lawyer said the woman's claims of physical and sexual abuse are lies made up because the couple is separating. Neighbours in a working-class city south of Los Angeles described an outwardly happy family, while authorities and psychologists cautioned that both could be true - Garcia could have been a doting husband who controlled his wife without physically restraining her through years of abuse.
The case began to emerge Monday, when the woman went two blocks from her apartment complex to the local police station and accused Garcia of domestic violence. During that conversation, officers learned of her connection to a 2004 missing persons case.
Police interviewed both Garcia and the woman and concluded that the husband had been sexually abusing her a decade ago and kidnapped her after a fight with her mother, who was his girlfriend at the time.
After holding her captive, Garcia moved at least four times and gave her multiple fake identities to hide her from family and authorities, Santa Ana Police Cpl. Anthony Bertagna said.
The woman, who police did not identify, told investigators she often thought about escaping but fear paralysed her. She came to the United States illegally in 2004 and said Garcia used that to isolate her, telling her that her mother had given up searching and that if she contacted authorities, she would be deported.
Police said Garcia forced the woman to marry in 2007 and fathered a daughter, now 3, with her.
In April, the woman got in touch with her mother after finding her sister on Facebook to wish her a happy birthday, according to Bertagna.
The mother showed the daughter old news articles to prove that she had gone to the police and filed a missing persons report, according to Bertagna.
"The mother was able to show her that she was, in fact, looking for her," Bertagna said.
Garcia's lawyer, Charles Frisco, said outside Thursday's brief court hearing that his client denies all the allegations, never hit his wife and would never have prevented her from leaving.
Several neighbours who knew the suspect as Tomas Medrano for the four years the couple lived there found the woman's portrait of him hard to reconcile with the friendly man they knew.
"He treats her like a queen. He does his best to do whatever she wants," next-door neighbour Maria Sanchez said in Spanish after police announced Garcia's arrest Wednesday.
Other neighbours said they sensed not all was well.
"He was always watching, you know, when she was outside, he was looking through the window," said neighbour Maribel Garcia, who used to babysit the woman's baby. "She would just look at him up and then she would go right back in."
The woman told KABC-TV that her neighbours might believe Garcia was a good man because he provided for her.
"He worked hard for me and my daughter, and he bought everything I want. But I didn't want that," she said. "I need love from my family, not things."
