Inset, left to right: Tania Garcia and Brenda Garcia (Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office). Background: The Montgomery County Jail (Google Maps).
Two sisters in Texas have been arrested after allegedly spending months starving and abusing a 12-year-old girl who went to them for help — but was instead beaten with a series of household items, repeatedly cut and choked, and told to “just die.”
Brenda Garcia, 38, and Tania Garcia, 37, were taken into custody last week and charged with one count each of felony injury to a child, unlawful restraint, and invasive visual recording, authorities announced.
According to a news release from the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office, investigators with the agency’s special victims unit on Sept. 28 responded to a call for help involving a 12-year-old child “who disclosed ongoing physical and sexual abuse.” The child had been transported to Texas Children’s Hospital, where the medical staff confirmed that her injuries were “consistent with abuse and malnutrition.”
Five days after the initial 911 call, investigators on Oct. 3 obtained and executed arrest warrants on the Garcia sisters, taking them into custody without incident.
“The safety and well-being of children will always be my highest priority,” Montgomery County Sheriff Wesley Doolittle said in a statement. “This case is deeply disturbing, but it also highlights the importance of community awareness and the courage it takes to speak up. Together, we can protect the most vulnerable among us and ensure that justice is served.”
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The sheriff’s office declined to release any more information in connection with the case due to the “active and ongoing” nature of the investigation.
However, court documents obtained by KTRK provided additional details about the abuse the child was allegedly forced to endure.
According to the report, before moving in with the Garcia sisters, the victim had been staying with an uncle because her biological mother lives in another country. During that time, the child said, her uncle repeatedly sexually assaulted her, which led to her asking for help from Brenda Garcia, who was friends with the uncle.
Brenda Garcia allegedly agreed to help, and in March allowed the victim to move into her home, where she lived with her sister. But authorities said the sisters began to physically and emotionally abuse the victim almost immediately after she moved in with them.
The victim reportedly told authorities that the sisters would regularly tie her up and strike her with objects, including belts, electric cords, and sticks. She said they would also cut her with scissors and choke her — sometimes manually and other times using a belt.
When the victim was able to escape her restraints and get away from the sisters, she was reportedly covered from head-to-toe in bruises, cuts, and scars, including a gash on her forehead that had become infected.
In an interview with detectives, the sisters brushed off the victim’s claims, telling investigators the 12-year-old was “psychotic” and that her injuries were self-inflicted, Houston CBS affiliate KHOU reported. But cellphone videos and security footage from inside the sisters’ home reportedly contradicted the defendants’ claims.
The alleged abuse reportedly included the victim being strangled with a belt and told to “just die already,” being beaten with various objects, being bound to chairs and emotionally degraded, being starved and then forced to eat off of the floor, and being photographed naked.
Brenda and Tania Garcia are currently being held in the Montgomery County Jail on bonds of $200,000 each. It was not immediately clear when they were scheduled to appear in court.
