Mom worried teen would leave with alleged abductor, neighbor says

The mother of a teen allegedly kidnapped by the woman’s boyfriend 10 years ago worried before she went missing that he was having sex with the girl and that she planned to leave with him, a neighbor said Wednesday.

“I spoke to her mom about God,” Silvia Suarez, 54, said in Spanish at the sprawling Villa del Sol apartment complex in Santa Ana. “She said she was having problems with her partner. She believed he was romancing her daughter.”

Isidro Garcia of Bell Gardens was arrested Tuesday after his alleged victim reached out to her sister on Facebook and told how she had been held hostage in a relationship with the 41-year-old man since 2004 and had given birth to their child. He was arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and rape.

The mother also suspected that her partner was having have a sexual relationship with her daughter that they planned to leave together, Suarez said.

Araceli Ochoa, a leasing agent for the well-kept 500-unit complex, remembered speaking to the girl’s mother after the girl went missing. She said the mother came to her office and was deeply worried and stressed.

“She couldn’t understand how her daughter could leave,” Ochoa said, expressing relief the victim, now 25, was located by police this week.

“I am very excited that they found her but it’s still a tragedy that she has to live with this every day now,” Ochoa said. “Each day with him probably felt like 100 years to her.”

Santa Ana police say the girl’s mother reported her missing in August 2004. The mother told police her daughter went missing, along with the mother’s live-in boyfriend, Garcia, after a domestic violence incident.

Detectives say the mother suspected Garcia was sexually abusing her daughter. The victim, now 25, revealed to authorities Tuesday how she allegedly was abducted in June 2004, when she was living with her mother and sisters in Santa Ana.

The victim told detectives that Garcia began sexually assaulting her. In August 2004, after Garcia assaulted her mother, Garcia drugged the girl and drove her to a house in Compton, police said.

Once there, Garcia provided the girl with fake identity documents and locked her overnight in a garage to prevent her from fleeing, police said.

He allegedly warned the victim that her family had given up looking for her and that if she tried to go back to them, the family would be deported.

To avoid detection by authorities, he moved with the girl several times. Over the years, Garcia frequently physically and sexually assaulted her, authorities said.

To earn a living and keep an eye on her, Garcia arranged for the two to work for a cleaning service at night, detectives said.

While no longer a physical hostage, the victim saw no way out and lived with Garcia under what investigators described as “sustained physical and mental abuse,” detectives said.

In 2007, Garcia forced the victim into marriage, and in 2012, the two had a child, according to investigators.