A mother whose daughter was horrifically tortured by the girls’ stepmother and father has filed a lawsuit against the county of Orange and the city of Anaheim, alleging that child protective services workers and police officers failed to act despite multiple reports of abuse.
The civil complaint, filed recently in Orange County Superior Court, follows the criminal convictions of Mayra Chavez and Domingo Flores for the torture of a then-10-year-old girl — who was left emaciated, severely injured and near death — and the abuse of two other girls.
The level of abuse — which a prosecutor described as “sadistic” — left a clear impact on law enforcement and DA officials, who were visibly emotional immediately after Chavez’s conviction last year. Veteran Orange County Superior Court Judge Scott Steiner while handing down a nearly 15 years to life sentence for Chavez referred to her as a “demon in human form” who carried out what amounted to “little more than medieval torture.” The judge, who has presided over countless criminal cases, also referred to the Chavez case as “the most dreadful trial of my 24 years in criminal law.”
The repeated torture included forcing the girl to kneel on cans for long periods of time and tying her to furniture for hours on end. It ultimately resulted in severe injuries, including a broken neck and a bone sticking out of an unhealed sore.
Last month, Flores — the biological father to the torture victim and one of the other victims — pleaded guilty to several charges, including child abuse and assault, and was sentenced to 14 years in prison, records show.
With the criminal case dealing with the culpability of the father and stepmother wrapped up, an attorney representing the mother of the torture victim and one of the other victims said the new lawsuit is meant to address why no one stepped in earlier.
“This is about the worst abuse we have seen in terms of the level of cruelty and the amount of time, the years, that went by — it is really horrific,” said Roger Booth, an attorney whose Torrance-based firm specializes in representing victims of child abuse. “(Child protective services), and to a lesser degree the police department in Anaheim, had an opportunity to stop this several years earlier.”
A representative with the County of Orange Social Services Agency declined to comment, citing a policy not to discuss pending litigation. An Anaheim representative described what happened to the girls as “an incomprehensible case of child cruelty,” but declined to specifically comment on the allegations in the civil complaint.
“While justice is hard to fully come by in a case like this, we at least have seen criminal convictions of Chavez and Flores, who bear sole responsibility for this horrendous tragedy,” said Mike Lyster, a spokesman for the city of Anaheim. “Beyond that, we will defer additional comment until we’ve had a chance to fully review this litigation and out of respect for all involved.”
The girls’ mother and Flores broke up in early 2017, and Flores began dating — later marrying — Chavez. The mother said Flores initially took custody of the girls while she dealt with health issues. It quickly turned into a heated custody battle, according to interviews and trial testimony.
The mother said she tried to alert authorities about the abuse, but felt like she was ignored and looked at like a “bitter ex-wife.”
“I felt extremely helpless and hurt,” the mother said. “I was desperate for help. I didn’t know who to turn to.”
As early as May 2017 there were reports of abuse in family court proceedings and to child protective services, Booth said.
“Everyone kind of threw up their hands and said ‘well, it is a custody dispute, we don’t know who is telling the truth, so we aren’t going to do anything,” the attorney said.
After spending a winter break with her children, and witnessing what she described as terror at being returned to their father, the mother decided not to return the girls to Flores and Chavez. On the orders of a family court judge, the girls were taken to the Orangewood Children and Family Center, an emergency shelter operated by the county for abused, neglected or abandoned kids.
According to the lawsuit, the girls gave a social worker “specific and detailed” accounts of the abuse and neglect they suffered at their father’s house. But, despite those first-hand accounts — which the lawsuit says were discussed with supervisors and a program manager — the girls were returned to Flores and Chavez’s custody.
“I was shocked,” the mother said of the decision. “I felt like finally something was going to be done, like something was going to change. And if just felt like I couldn’t continue with these agencies and these people with badges who were supposed to protect my kids. For them to just turn them over to those monsters, I just don’t understand.”
Over the next few years, according to trial testimony, the abuse intensified. Flores and Chavez refused to let the girls’ see their mother, and the pandemic left them isolated away from school.
Chavez and Flores seemed to focus the brunt of the abuse on one particular girl. According to courtroom testimony, she was forced to kneel on canned goods for hours — causing deep infections, was zip-tied to furniture for days — resulting in cuts on her wrists and ankles that went down to the bone, resulting in sepsis — was subjected to cold showers and ice baths and had hot peppers shoved into her eyes and elsewhere.
In June 2022, Anaheim officers carried out a welfare check at Flores and Chavez’s home, but left before searching the residence, apparently not realizing one of the girls was tied up at the time in a bedroom. The lawsuit alleges that the officers also failed to make a mandatory report to child protective services.
A little more than two months later, Flores brought the girl to Children’s Hospital of Orange County, claiming she had fallen down some stairs and harmed herself. Hospital workers were shocked at her condition. She was in septic shock and experiencing heart failure, so malnourished at 50 pounds that nurses and doctors assumed she was years younger than her actual age. It would be nine months — and 17 surgeries — before she was able to walk again.
During the trial, Chavez’s attorney argued Chavez suffered her own abusive childhood and was trying to discipline, not torture, a child she “couldn’t understand or control.” In a brief statement during Chavez’s sentencing hearing, the girl told Chavez that “I don’t know why I thought what you did to me was my fault.”
Along with the civil lawsuit — which seeks unspecified monetary damages — officials at the DA’s office have also indicated a need to look into why the abuse wasn’t discovered sooner. DA Todd Spitzer after attending Chavez’s sentencing told reporters that his office needed to determine why the abuse “went on this long, this bad.”
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