A 34-year-old Anaheim woman was sentenced Friday to nearly 15 years to life for torturing her 10-year-old stepdaughter, who was left emaciated, severely injured and near death. The judge told the stepmother he hopes she never will be released from prison.
During searing comments made before handing down the 14 years and 10 months to life term, Orange County Superior Court Judge Scott Steiner described Mayra Chavez as a “demon in human form” who was convicted of carrying out what amounted to “little more than medieval torture” following what the judge called “the most dreadful trial of my 24 years in criminal law.”
“She is evil incarnate, everything to be feared in life,” Steiner said of Chavez. “I can only hope most earnestly that the defendant spends the rest of her life in prison.”
Chavez was convicted of torture related to one girl in her care, two counts of felony child abuse related to two other young girls, and a lesser misdemeanor charge of simple assault related to an older teen boy. Her husband, Domingo Flores, is awaiting a separate trial.
According to testimony during her trial, Chavez directed the brunt of what prosecutors described as “sadistic” torture on one girl, apparently over anger at the girl’s biological mother, with whom Chavez and her husband were embroiled in a vicious custody battle. The abuse ramped up as the pandemic left the children isolated away from school, and persisted for a lengthy time despite reports to child protection and law enforcement officials.
The girl was fed only oatmeal and was forced to eat away from the rest of the family, facing a wall. She was forced to kneel on canned goods and hold weights over her head for lengthy periods. She was zip-tied to a bed, then later to a TV stand without a pillow or blanket. At times hot peppers were shoved into her eyes and elsewhere; at other times, she was subjected to cold showers and ice baths.
The girl’s father brought her to Children’s Hospital of Orange County in August 2022, claiming she had harmed herself and then fallen down some stairs. Emergency workers were shocked at her condition. She was in septic shock and was experiencing heart failure, so malnourished at 50 pounds that nurses and doctors initially thought she was years younger than her actual age.
The judge noted that in pictures taken at the hospital, the girl looked like a cadaver. Among her many injuries — which ultimately required 17 surgeries — were a broken neck and a bone sticking out of an unhealed sore. It would be nine months until she was able to walk again.
In a brief statement to Chavez during Friday’s hearing, the young girl told Chavez that “I don’t know why I thought what you did to me was my fault.”
Her biological mother, who now has custody of her, said the girl has gotten past the “miserable life of fear and pain” that Chavez put her through and has “surpassed the darkness.”
Dozens of supporters — who packed the courtroom — greeted and embraced the girl after the hearing.
The two other girls abused by Chavez — who were several years older than the torture victim — told the judge that they regretted not doing more to tell someone else about what the younger girl was going through. One of them told Chavez that she will “never comprehend what you did to me,” while the other said that she hoped to one day “be able to have peace and stop thinking of you.”
“All you ever did was lie, every step you took was destruction,” the torture victim’s uncle told Chavez.
Chavez did not speak during the hearing. She occasionally shook her head as the others spoke.
During the trial, Chavez’s attorney said she suffered her own abusive childhood and had been diagnosed with anxiety and depression. The defense attorney argued that Chavez was trying to discipline, not torture, a child she “couldn’t understand or control.”
In October, a Santa Ana jury took less than five hours to convict Chavez. Several jurors returned to court on Friday to watch the sentencing, the judge noted.
Orange County DA Todd Spitzer also attended the sentencing, and afterward said that once the trial of Chavez’s husband is completed he plans to do a full assessment to find out why the abuse wasn’t discovered sooner. At one point the torture victim’s uncle and aunt reported the abuse, and an officer even stopped by Chavez’s Anaheim apartment to ask her about the allegations on another occasion, but nothing was done until the girl was brought to the hospital.
“I need to understand how things went on this long, this bad,” Spitzer said.
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office said a fund has been set up to provide support and accept donations for the 10-year-old girl and her siblings through the Orange County Family Justice Center.
