California woman convicted of torturing 10-year-old step-daughter
A 33-year-old Anaheim woman was convicted Wednesday of inflicting what prosecutors described as “unspeakable” torture on step-daughter who was left severely malnourished, and of abusing other children in her care.
A 33-year-old Anaheim woman was convicted Wednesday of inflicting what prosecutors described as “unspeakable” torture on a 10-year-old step-daughter who was left severely malnourished, and of abusing other children in her care.
An Orange County Superior Court jury deliberated for roughly five hours before finding Mayra Chavez guilty of torture related to one girl, two counts of felony child abuse related to two other young girls and a lesser charge of misdemeanor simple assault related to a teen boy.
Jurors also determined that Chavez inflicted great bodily injury on the girl she tortured. Chavez’s husband, Domingo Flores, is scheduled to be tried separately.
Deputy District Attorney Bethel Cope-Vega told jurors during closing arguments Wednesday that Chavez may have aimed the brunt of the abuse at the one girl over anger at her biological mother, with whom Chavez and her husband were apparently embroiled in a vicious custody battle.
“This is a case about what happens behind closed doors,” the prosecutor said. “But it is also a case about diabolical creativity. It is a case about power.”
The prosecutor described Chavez as sadistic, telling jurors that she “systematically dehumanized” the torture victim.
“She found ways to up the ante,” Cope-Vega said. “She sat around thinking about new ways to torture.”
The girl was forced to kneel on canned goods and hold weights over her head for lengthy periods, according to testimony during the trial. She was forced to eat just oatmeal, away from others in the family, while facing a wall.
The girl was zip-tied to her bed, then later to a TV stand without a pillow or blanket. At times hot peppers were placed in her eyes and her vagina, the prosecutor told jurors, and on other occasions she was subjected to cold showers and ice baths.
With schools closing during the pandemic, Chavez had free rein to abuse the girl, the prosecutor said. When an officer made a welfare check on the girl following a complaint by a relative in 2022, Chavez was able to convince them that nothing was awry using “award-winning theatrics,” the prosecutor added.
Her father brought the girl to Children’s Hospital of Orange County in August 2022, claiming she had harmed herself and fallen down some stairs.
The girl was in septic shock and was experiencing heart failure when she arrived at the hospital, so malnourished at 50 pounds that nurses and doctors initially thought she was years younger than her actual age. Among her numerous injuries were a broken neck, and a bone sticking out of an unhealed sore. She underwent 17 surgeries — including plastic surgery on her face — and wasn’t able to walk for nine months.
Cope-Vega described photos of the girl taken when she first arrived at the hospital as looking like autopsy photos, noting that she was “literally covered with injuries from head to toe.”
“This was not a child, this was a crime scene,” the prosecutor told jurors.
The three other victims were forced to witness the torture, and were themselves struck and abused by Chavez, according to testimony during the trial.
Chavez’s attorney, Alternate Defender Tom Nocella, told jurors that Chavez herself suffered an abusive childhood and was trying to discipline — not torture — a child who Chavez “couldn’t understand or control.”
“She thought this was what discipline was,” Nocella said of Chavez.
Chavez also suffered from anxiety and depression, Nocella said. The defense attorney argued that there wasn’t the intent on Chavez’s part needed to find her guilty of torture.
“We all agree, the injuries are there, the injuries are horrible,” Nocella said.
The prosecutor pushed back against the description of the 10-year-old as a “difficult child,” saying others who knew her — including the doctors and hospital workers who interacted with her — described her as a “sweet and loving” girl who was “starved for affection.”
Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said the “unimaginable pain and suffering” that the girl endured “has brought the most experienced prosecutors, police officer, and hospital staff to tears.
She is alive today as a result of the heroic efforts by CHOC to save her life,” Spitzer said in a written statement following the verdict. “Child abuse cannot and will not be normalized. Horrific things happen behind closed doors and we remain more committed than ever as prosecutors and law enforcement officials to throw open those doors and shed light on the most vulnerable of victims who are suffering in silence.”
Chavez is scheduled to return to court for sentencing on Nov. 3. She faces up to 17 years and four months to life in prison, according to the DA office.