A woman abducted from her suburban Southern California home when she was 15 said her mother A woman convinced her to go to authorities to report that she had been kidnapped and raped by a man who is now her husband and father of her daughter, according to the Associated Press.
The woman who is now 25 was found alive after a decade-long ordeal of physical and sexual abuse, and her accused kidnapper has been arrested, police said on Wednesday, the AP reported.
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, according to the AP. He is being held on $1 million bail.
Over the years, she was sexually assaulted by her abductor and gave birth to his child in 2012, police said, the AP reported. The woman contacted authorities on Tuesday after first reaching out to her sister on Facebook.
Garcia, 41, was taken into custody on Tuesday on suspicion of kidnapping, rape, lewd acts with a minor and false imprisonment, according to the police statement, according to the AP.
The woman's escape comes a year after three Ohio women famously escaped from a home in suburban Cleveland, telling authorities that they had been held captive there for years and abused by their captor, Ariel Castro, the AP reported.
Castro pleaded guilty to 937 counts including aggravated murder for forcing one of the women, whom he had impregnated, to miscarry, according to the AP. He was found hanged in his cell a month into a life sentence in a death later ruled a suicide.
In the California case, the young woman's mother reported her missing, along with Garcia, shortly after he fled the home with her daughter, the AP reported. Their whereabouts remained unknown for the next 10 years.
The woman told authorities that Garcia, who lived with her family, began sexually abusing her in June of 2004 and took her from the home in August of that year after assaulting her mother, police said, according to the AP.
The abductor moved with the teenager several times during the following months and years, police said, telling her that family members had stopped looking for her and would be deported if she tried to contact them, the AP reported.
Garcia frequently assaulted the woman physically and sexually over the next 10 years, forcing her into marriage in 2007 and later impregnating her, she told police, according to the AP.
