Mother persuaded kidnapped woman to go to police

SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) — A California 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 she was too scared to go to authorities until she recently reunited with her mother, police said Thursday.

The woman, who disappeared when she was 15, eventually married the man and started a family with him. Neighbors said she took Zumba classes and went on trips to the beach and Disneyland.

Orange County prosecutors on Thursday filed five felony charges against the alleged abductor, Isidro Garcia, including rape and kidnapping to commit a sexual offense. He did not enter a plea, and his arraignment was continued until June 9. He was jailed on $1 million bail.

Garcia's attorney said the woman's claims of physical and sexual abuse are lies made up because the couple is separating. Neighbors 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 police department in working-class Bell Gardens and accused Garcia of domestic violence. During that conversation, officers learned of her connection to a 2004 missing-persons case in Santa Ana, about 20 miles away.

Santa Ana police interviewed both Garcia, 41, 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.

Garcia and the woman both worked for a janitorial company cleaning a building that houses some offices of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.

The woman, whom police did not identify, told investigators she often thought about escaping but fear paralyzed 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 with her who is now 3.

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, Bertagna said.

"The mother was able to show her that she was, in fact, looking for her," Bertagna said.

Two sisters who live in the same apartment building as Garcia said the woman reunited with her mother and sister on Mother's Day, and Garcia drove her to visit her family in Anaheim the following weekend.

"She was different with us after that. She was more serious, more distant," Maria Azucena Reyes said.

The criminal charges all date to a three-month period in 2004 around the time she went missing, which was Aug. 3, 2004, according to the criminal complaint.

Prosecutors in Los Angeles County said Thursday they declined to file domestic violence charges against Garcia in last week's Bell Gardens case because there isn't sufficient evidence, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office. That incident occurred Saturday and the alleged victim went to police two days later.

Neighbor Ernesto Rios said he had a conversation with Garcia about three weeks ago, and Garcia said his wife's mother had come from Mexico and was causing problems.

Rios said Garcia told him that his wife "just wants to be with her mom, and she got married with me, not with her mom."

When reached by phone, the woman's mother told The Associated Press that police told her not to speak with any media.

Garcia's attorney, 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.

"Like all married people and like all couples, people have problems, people break up and sometimes get very belligerent during the divorce process, the separation process, and say things that aren't true," Frisco said.

In Bell Gardens, several neighbors 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.

The woman's Facebook page, confirmed as hers by a neighbor, portrayed a happy family; as recently as May 1, she had updated her profile picture to include a family shot at a park. She frequently posted about the health of her young daughter, who suffered allergies and some fevers. Neighbors said she called Garcia "mi amor," or "my love," and was trying to conceive again.

"People say he was controlling, but I don't see him (as) smart enough to do that," neighbor Lourdes Hernandez said. "On the contrary, she used to manage the money. ... He wasn't that smart. She was."

Other neighbors said they sensed not all was well.

"He was always watching, you know, when she was outside, he was looking through the window," said neighbor 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 neighbors 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."

KABC-TV didn't identify the woman because she's an alleged victim of sexual abuse. The station had interviewed the woman's mother when she went missing 10 years ago.

Garcia's jobs included making eggrolls at a Chinese food company and being a janitor at a Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services building. His attorney sought to cast doubt on his accuser's motivations.

"From a perspective of common sense, 10 years have gone by, and she never ever told one person that something was afoul?" he said. "Why is it she never said anything to indicate he did anything wrong?"

Psychology experts said it's not unusual for kidnapped victims to stay in an abusive relationship while appearing to have a normal life. Their basic needs, such as food and shelter, are met.

"We're built in a way to form an attachment to anyone who takes care of us," said Jennifer Freyd, a psychologist at the University of Oregon.

And it can be risky to flee. Police said the woman tried to escape twice but was severely beaten. Reality can be further distorted when victims marry their captors or start a family.

Witness accounts of a happy couple and the defense attorney's statements about Garcia's innocence do not change the case against him, said Farrah Emami, a spokeswoman for Orange County's district attorney.

"Over the course of many, many years, her freedoms may have increased, but she was still mentally his captive," Emami said. "I'm sure the neighbors are stating what they saw, but what was going on privately in the home was different. This was prolonged and extended emotional, physical and sexual abuse."

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Abdollah reported from Bell Gardens. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Amy Taxin and Raquel Maria Dillon in Santa Ana, Justin Pritchard and Alicia Chang in Los Angeles, and Edwin Tamara in Bell Gardens; and researcher Barbara Sambriski in New York.

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

The woman said in a television interview that she was overjoyed to be reunited with her family.

"I was very afraid about everything because I was alone," she told KABC-TV.

Garcia's attorney, Charles Frisco, said outside a brief court hearing that his client denies all the allegations, never hit his wife, and would never have prevented her from leaving.

"Like all married people and like all couples, people have problems, people break up and sometimes get very belligerent during the divorce process, the separation process, and say things that aren't true," Frisco said.

Police said that the woman, who they did not identify, had arrived in the U.S. from Mexico several months before her abduction and did not speak English at the time.

On Monday, she contacted police in the working-class city of Bell Gardens to report a domestic violence incident with Garcia. During that investigation, authorities realized her connection to the 2004 case.

Garcia forced the woman to marry in 2007 and fathered a daughter, now 3, with her, Santa Ana police said.

In Bell Gardens — near Los Angeles and about 20 miles from where she originally vanished — stunned neighbors who knew the suspect as Tomas Medrano found the woman's portrait of him hard to reconcile with the man they knew.

"He treats her like a queen. He does his best to do whatever she wants," next-door neighbor Maria Sanchez said Wednesday in Spanish after police announced Garcia's arrest.

The woman told the station that her neighbors believed 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 with her mother, sister and daughter at her side. "I need love from my family, not things."

When reached by phone by The Associated Press, the woman's mother said she had no comment because police told her not to speak with media.

Bertagna said his department's investigation concluded the following:

The girl arrived from Mexico in February 2004 to join her mother and sister in Santa Ana, about 30 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles. She had entered the United States illegally.

Garcia was her mother's boyfriend. After one fight between the girl's mother and Garcia in August 2004, the girl's mother left the house and the girl went to a nearby park.

Garcia followed the girl. When he caught up with her, she said she had a headache and wanted to go home.

"He told her then, 'You can't go home. You're here illegally. You don't speak the language. Your mom's called the police. They will send you back. I'm your only hope,'" Bertagna said.

Garcia gave her five pills that he said would help her headache but instead knocked her out. When the girl awoke, she was locked in a garage in Compton, a city between Santa Ana and Los Angeles.

The mother "filed a police report and for 10 years (police) did due diligence. But they were changing their names and dates of birth and physical locations so that made it exceedingly difficult," Bertagna said.

In 2007, Garcia got documents from Mexico that gave the girl a new name and date of birth. Using those documents, he married her at a courthouse.

Police said the woman tried to escape twice but was severely beaten.

Elizabeth Smart, who was kidnapped from her Utah bedroom at 14 and held captive for nine months, told The Associated Press that people cannot know what victims are going through and should not question why the woman didn't escape sooner.

"We don't know what these evil people are holding over them — whether it's their families' lives, their lives, whatever it is," Smart said.

Marisa Cianciarulo, a law professor at Chapman University, said immigrants who came to the United States illegally are vulnerable to certain kinds of manipulation.

"The threat that 'I am going to get your family deported' is a very real threat," Cianciarulo said. "Any interaction with law enforcement, whether it is federal, local, can be seen as very threatening and frightening to undocumented immigrants."

In addition, small acts of kindness — a bit of food, permission to use the bathroom — can create positive feelings within the victim that the captor then exploits, said Dr. Frank Ochberg, an expert on the psychology of captives.

Garcia lived in Bell Gardens for about four years. The family had the second-floor corner unit of a stucco apartment building in a quiet neighborhood across from a park.

Neighbors said Garcia always said hello, joked with neighbors and sometimes brought them fruit. His wife worked for a nearby janitorial service, and he held at least two jobs — including one making egg rolls — and also collected cardboard and recyclable items to sell.

Garcia said he wanted to save money so that his wife didn't have to work, said Lourdes Hernandez, who baby-sat their child for a year.

The family threw elaborate parties that included costumed characters and raffle giveaways. A video taken at their daughter's birthday party last year shows the mother with the girl in her arms, line-dancing behind her husband as he wiggles his hips.

Hernandez said the woman took Zumba classes in South Los Angeles and sometimes invited her along. She said she found the woman's story hard to believe.

"He worked hard for her," she said.

Neighbors said the family took trips together to Disneyland and the beach, and even up north to visit Garcia's family.

"I'm astounded she waited so long to say something," said Rita Salazar, who lived across the street from the couple.

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Associated Press writers Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, Michael R. Blood and Justin Pritchard in Los Angeles, Michelle Price in Salt Lake City and researcher Barbara Sambriski in New York contributed to this report.

Copyright © The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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