California Prosecutors charged a man today with kidnapping his former girlfriend's 15-year-old daughter a decade ago and repeatedly sexually assaulting her.
The woman, now 25, came forward this week and told police that Isidro Medrano Garcia had abducted her and then through physical, mental and sexual abuse kept her from reuniting with her family since her 2004 disappearance.
Garcia faces five felony counts, including rape and kidnapping to commit a sexual offense, the Orange County district attorney's office said. His arraignment was expected later in the day.
Garcia forced the woman to marry in 2007 and fathered a daughter with her in 2012, according to investigators with the Santa Ana Police Department.
Police described an ordeal during which the woman, broken through mental, physical and sexual abuse , was moved at least four times and given multiple fake identities to hide her from family and authorities.
The woman, who police did not identify by name, said she often thought about escaping but did not out of fear, even though in recent years she was not physically held captive. "I was very afraid about everything because I was alone," she said in an interview with KABC-TV that aired last night.
Police said that she had arrived in the US from Mexico several months before her abduction and didn't speak English at the time.
