The SANTIAGO Children - Dallas TX

Abernis
Santiago, the Dallas mother accused of letting her children starve,
claims an abusive relationship drove her to do it. Police
found the three children malnourished and on the brink of death. They
had spent the last year of their lives locked in the bathroom of a
Dallas motel room. The children's stepfather is charged with sexual abuse. A judge on Tuesday decided there's enough evidence for the mother's case to go before a grand jury. Santiago didn't say a word during the hearing, but the state's key
witness — a Dallas police detective — spoke volumes when she described
finding the three children. She said they had sunken eyes, flaky skin, bruises all over their bodies and signs of severe malnourishment. The children said they had been starved at the hands of their stepfather, Alfred Santiago. The oldest girl, aged 11, said he had sexually molested her for the
last three years while Abernis Santiago was at work. The
attorney for Abernis Santiago said she was in an abusive relationship,
fearing for herself and her children. She finally got the courage to call police last month, when her brother was in town. "She loves the children, wants the best for the children. She says she
did provide food for the children," defense attorney James Jamison told
the court. "There was evidence today that she fed them in the morning
and she fed them in the evening but in the day, all this other stuff
went on." Alfred Santiago denied the allegations in an
interview on July 22. "I am a very innocent person, just caught up,
unfortunately, on what they are trying to cover up," he said. He is charged with continuing sexual abuse, and more charges may follow
stemming from his relations with his two other stepchildren ages 10 and
5. Meanwhile, Abernis Santiago remains behind bars. She is charged with injury to a child of the first degree. More charges may follow for her regarding her two little boys. The grand jury is expected to hear this case within the next three weeks.

The case of a mother accused of keeping her three children
starving in a hotel bathroom for at least nine months will proceed to a
grand jury, a judge ruled Tuesday.

Judge Terrie McVea ruled during an examining trial that there was probable cause for a grand
jury to consider indicting Abneris Santiago. A Dallas grand jury will
likely get the case this month.

Santiago, 30, is charged with one count of injury to a child, and prosecutors have said they would
likely add two more counts this week.

Police and a relative found Santiago's three children shut inside a hotel bathroom last
month. The 11-year-old girl and her 10- and 5-year-old half brothers
were emaciated and filthy, requiring hospitalization for 10 days. The
doctor who examined them said the children appeared to have been
starved and that their condition was life-threatening.

The 11-year-old said she had been sexually assaulted, and the eldest son
was covered in bruises from a beating authorities said was delivered by
his mother's boyfriend.

James Jamison, Santiago's attorney, said
he expected the ruling and that he requested the optional examining
trial to get a preview of the state's case.

"It's relatively easy to show probable cause," Jamison said.

The mother's boyfriend, 37-year-old Alfred Santiago, faces charges of
aggravated sexual assault and continuous sexual abuse. Three additional
charges of injury to a child likely will be filed against him,
Assistant District Attorney Eren Price said.

The Santiagos, who remain in the Dallas County Jail, are not married but have the same
last name. The three older children have different fathers. The
youngest child is the daughter of both Santiagos.

Alfred Santiago's attorney was out of town Tuesday and did not immediately return a message left by The Associated Press.

Abneris Santiago, wearing thick glasses and a gray-and-green-striped jail
uniform, declined to make a statement during the court hearing. She has
not spoken publicly about the case, turning down repeated requests for
interviews from jail.

During the hearing, Santiago appeared
alternately sad and defiant. She lowered her head and blinked
repeatedly as Dallas police detective Lisette Rivera described the
condition of her children when they were found July 2. Santiago shook
her head in disagreement when Rivera said the 11-year-old girl had told
her mother that she had been sexually abused for three years.

Rivera, the only witness questioned during the hearing, said the family lived
in the Budget Suites of America hotel for nearly a year. The suite had
a bed, a couch and a crib. The three older children spent day and night
inside the bathroom, she said, and never attended school.

Rivera also said the children were so starved that their brains had atrophied.
The siblings and their 1-year-old half sister, who was found healthy,
later were placed together in foster care.

A couple accused of keeping three emaciated children in a Dallas
hotel bathroom for at least nine months face additional charges.Dallas
County Jail records indicate the children's mother, Abneris Santiago,
now faces three charges of injury to a child. She had faced just one
charge.Police also added three counts of injury to a child to
the case against her boyfriend, Alfred Santiago. He already faced one
count of aggravated sexual assault and one count of continuous sexual
abuse of a child.The couple are not married but have the same last name.Abneris Santiago's attorney said Monday that he had been expecting the additional charges.

There has
been a surprise twist in the case of three children found locked,
beaten and starving in the bathroom of a Dallas motel in July. The mother of the children, Abneris Santiago, and her boyfriend, Albert
Santiago, were charged with abuse in the case. Not only were the
children malnourished, but the oldest child, an 11-year-old girl, says
she was repeatedly raped. A 10-year-old boy was beaten. At a custody hearing on Friday, the fathers of two of the children
appeared, asking that their children be allowed to live with them. Henry Arceiciago travelled to the hearing from Tampa. He said he’d been
prevented from seeing his daughter for years and now wants punishment
for the Santiagos. “Those monsters, they’d better be in jail because
monsters like this, we don’t need them on the street," he said. Fernando Delgado, also from Tampa, is the father of the 10-year-old
boy, who was beaten in the couple’s care. He said his “heart is broken”
by what Abneris Santiago did to his son. He says every time he has
tried to get custody, his son has been given to his maternal
grandmother, who relinquishes care to her abusive daughter. The grandmother seemed to be the leading contender for custody of the
children. Judge Cheryl Lee Shannon asked CPS to evaluate the
grandmother’s house in Florida for suitability for the children. That
will be done by the next hearing in November. CPS
spokeswoman, Marissa Gonzales, said the children were improving.
“They’re steadily gaining weight,” she said. They’re in therapy, and
they’ve started school and we’re excited about that. And they’re all
together in the same foster home.” The Santiagos’ criminal case is pending.

Children found starving inside a Dallas hotel bathroom likely will be
placed in their maternal grandmother’s care pending the completion of a
home study and background check, a judge ruled Friday.


The judge concurred with an attorney for the children that it was in their best interests.


Juvenile district court Judge Cheryl Lee Shannon ordered Child
Protective Services to look into the suitability of the Tampa, Fla.,
home of Ruth Leon, the children’s grandmother. The agency will work
with its counterpart in Florida.


The four children will remain together in foster care in the
meantime. Their mother and her boyfriend were indicted last week on
abuse charges and remain in the Dallas County Jail. A pretrial hearing
is scheduled for November that could begin the process of severing
their parental rights.


In July, police found the three oldest children shut inside a
hotel bathroom and believe they were there for at least nine months.
The 11-year-old girl and her 10- and 5-year-old half brothers were
emaciated and filthy, officials said. A fourth child, a 1-year-old
girl, was healthy and unharmed.


A doctor said the children appeared to have been starved and
that their condition was life-threatening. The 11-year-old said she had
been sexually assaulted, and the eldest son was covered in bruises from
a beating.


authorities said was delivered by his mother’s boyfriend.


“They are all together in the same foster home, which we think
is the best thing for them,” said Marissa Gonzales, a spokeswoman for
Child Protective Services.


Mary Macias, the court-appointed attorney for the children,
said the biological fathers of two of them were ruled out for custody
because they have criminal backgrounds.


Leon declined to comment after the hearing. In previous
interviews with The Associated Press, she said her grandchildren lived
with her for several years in Florida. After their mother moved to Fort
Myers, Fla., Leon visited them every couple weeks until they moved to
Texas.


“The children are very comfortable with their grandmother,” Gonzales said.


During the hearing, Macias gave an update on the children’s
progress to the judge. The children were hospitalized for more than a
week after their initial rescue but their health has since stabilized.
They are receiving counseling, gaining weight and “doing great and very
happy,” Macias said.


They have also enrolled in school. The oldest girl told authorities in July that they had not attended in several years.


Also in attendance at the hearing was Abner Santiago and his
wife, Sonia, the brother and sister-in-law of the children’s mother.
They drove about 1,200 miles from the Cleveland area in July to check
on the children, a visit that led to the police rescue.


“They’re doing excellent,” Abner Santiago said of the children.


The mother, 30-year-old Abneris Santiago, was indicted last
week on three charges of injury to a child. Each is a first-degree
felony punishable by at least five years in prison.


Her boyfriend, 37-year-old Alfred Santiago, was indicted on
the same three charges, plus a charge of continuous sexual abuse, which
carries a minimum 25-year sentence.


The couple has the same last name but are not married. They have not entered pleas, according to court records.

There
was a time when three Dallas children loved the man accused of
imprisoning them in a hotel bathroom for months with little food.

Alfred Santiago



They play-fought, went for walks and called Alfred Santiago
"Dad," even though he was their mother's boyfriend. That all changed when he began beating and starving the children,
said a 12-year-old girl whom he’s also accused of sexually
abusing. "I thought he was a monster," the girl testified this afternoon.
An uncle visiting from Ohio found the children a year ago locked in a
filthy, foul-smelling bathroom at a Budget Suites on the Stemmons
Freeway, not far from Love Field. All three were emaciated. The girl detailed numerous incidents of sexual abuse by Santiago
that began when the family lived in Florida. She said he
threatened to hurt her family if she told anyone. When the family moved to Dallas County, she said, the abuse became more severe and frequent. The girl also told jurors about her time locked in the bathroom
and why she gave up food so her brothers could have a bit more.
"I knew they needed it more than me," she said.
The
worst thing about the months-long ordeal, the girl said, wasn't
starving or being raped or wearing the same clothes for a week or the
smell. "I had no one to love,” she said. “I
had my brothers. But I had no mom. I had no dad,” she said. The
pain was like "somebody was stabbing me through the heart. It was
horrible." Also testifying today was a forensic
interviewer, who broke down in tears this morning when describing
the children’s condition when she first spoke to them. The children were “like nothing I’ve ever seen before,” said
Jessie Gonzales, who has interviewed more than 2,000 abused
children. Gonzales said most abused children show
no outward signs of what they’ve endured, but these three were
different. She’s the third witness to testify that the girl and
her brothers, 5 and 10 at the time, resembled victims of the
Holocaust. She said she usually tries to build a
rapport with her subjects by asking about school, their friends
and what they do for fun. But that was a struggle, she said,
because these children spent months locked in a bathroom and did
not attend school. At one point during her
testimony, Gonzales covered her face with her hands and began to
sob, prompting the judge to call for a break.
Also this morning, Visiting Judge John Nelms dismissed a juror who
called to say she had child-care problems and couldn't report to court
today. She was told to show up anyway but didn’t and could not
be reached by the judge. The trial shouldn't be affected. There were two alternate jurors; one is now a juror. Both the prosecution and the defendant agreed to the dismissal. "I'm OK with it," Santiago said, standing before Nelms when the jury was not present. Because of the jury issue, testimony began more than 90 minutes late today. Gonzales, the forensic interviewer, talks to abused children so
that they are interviewed only once and aren’t asked leading
questions. The interviews are recorded so that prosecutors,
police and Child Protective Services don’t have to question the
children again. One of the children testified
Thursday that he and his siblings were fed less frequently than
once a day, and that when they did get food, it was only in tiny
amounts. He also described being beaten by his mother's
boyfriend. Photographs taken in the hotel room
and exhibited at Santiago's trial show that there was plenty of
food there: Its refrigerator and cabinets held cake, ice cream,
hot dogs, crackers and bread. The children's
mother, 31-year-old Abneris Santiago, is to be tried immediately
after her boyfriend. She, too, could be sent to prison for life
if convicted.

A man accused
of feeding his girlfriend's children just 300 calories a day testified
Monday at his trial that the children starved themselves by not eating
the food he gave them.Alfred Santiago, in sometimes tearful
testimony, also denied physically abusing the children, who were then
ages 5, 10 and 11, and sexually abusing the oldest child, a girl. "I could not force them to eat," Santiago said of the girl and her two brothers. "They did not want to eat what I fed them."When
rescued from the fetid bathroom at a Budget Suites motel where they
were imprisoned for months, the children were so emaciated that several
other witnesses testified that they looked like Holocaust survivors. Santiago,
38, said that the children's mother, 31-year-old Abneris Santiago, told
him not to interfere with how the children were treated because they
were not his children. He acknowledged that the children were sick and
repeatedly called himself "careless" for not intervening. "I
regret it," he said, his voice cracking and his face turning red. "I
didn't know what to do. I didn't know my rights. I didn't know the law."
A doctor testified earlier that the children were getting barely
enough calories to keep them alive. They should have been eating 2,000
to 3,000 calories a day. The children hid food in shampoo bottles and
under the cabinets because they did not know when they would eat again.
The girl sometimes went without so her brothers could have more.The children were rescued last July after an uncle visiting from Ohio discovered their plight.Alfred
Santiago, who is from New Jersey, also testified that it was their
mother, not he, who beat the children with extension cords and coat
hangers.Abneris Santiago, who was born in Puerto Rico, is
scheduled to go to trial when Alfred Santiago's trial ends. Both could
face life sentences. The two have the same last name but are not
married.Alfred Santiago is charged with sexually abusing the
11-year-old girl and denying her food and medical care. He faces pending
charges for accusations that he also denied food and medical care to
her brothers.Also Monday, the jury learned from the oldest
children why they believe Alfred Santiago and Abneris Santiago made them
live in the bathroom. The girl, now 12, and the boy, 11, took the
stand Monday for the second time during the trial as the defense began
presenting its case to jurors.They testified that Alfred Santiago
forced them to tell their mother that the three children had raped
their baby sister, who was 1 at the time. The little girl is the only
one of the four children who is the biological child of Alfred Santiago.
She was found to be healthy and unharmed.The older children said
they agreed to make the false confession because they were afraid
Alfred Santiago would beat them. Santiago also told the boy he would go
to jail if he didn't admit to the assault, the child testified.They said they never imagined that their mother would believe such a story."I
told my mom we had raped" the sister, the girl testified. "Why would
she think we had done that? She's just a baby. Why would anybody do
that?" The boy told jurors that being forced to lie about
molesting his baby sister "felt like the end of my life for me. I
thought Alfredo was going to kill me."Both the older children
testified that they loved the little girl and would not hurt her. All
four children live in foster care together and will soon live with their
grandmother.Alfred Santiago also made the children call relatives to tell them lies about raping their sister, the children said.The
girl testified that her mother "whupped" her, just as her mother had
when the girl twice told her that Alfred Santiago was sexually abusing
her.The girl testified last week in great detail about what she said were the many times Santiago had sexually assaulted her. Asked about that today, Alfred Santiago said: "I did not do that. I never touched her in any physical way." But
he also testified that he once woke from a nap and found that the girl
was either performing oral sex on him or about to do so. A police
officer testified that when Alfred Santiago was arrested, he told
officers who were not asking questions about abuse allegations that he
once woke up and his penis was inside the child's vagina.The jury is likely to get the case as soon as Tuesday.

Opening statements are scheduled in the Dallas trial of a woman
accused of starving three of her children kept locked in a hotel
bathroom for as long as nine months.
Abneris Santiago is charged with three counts of injury to a
child. The 31-year-old woman's trial begins Wednesday, one day after
co-defendant Alfred Santiago received a 99-year prison term for injury
to a child and continuous sexual abuse.
Police found the three children shut inside a Dallas
extended-stay hotel room's bathroom last summer. Officials say the
11-year-old girl and her half brothers, ages 10 and 5, were emaciated
and filthy.
Each child has a different father. Alfred and Abneris Santiago
are unmarried but share the same surname and have a daughter who was 1
when the arrests happened. She was healthy and unharmed, and the four
children now share a foster home.

A mother whose three children were found starving after being shut
away in a hotel bathroom for as long as nine months has been sentenced
to life in prison.



The Dallas jury determined the sentence Friday.
It came hours after 31-year-old Abneris Santiago changed her plea to
guilty on the third day of testimony. She had faced a minimum of 5 years
to a maximum of life in prison.Police rescued the children from a
bathroom in an extended-stay hotel along one of Dallas' busiest
freeways in July 2009. The children were near death from chronic
starvation. Authorities say the oldest child, a girl, was repeatedly
sexually assaulted by her mother's boyfriend.Alfred Santiago was convicted Tuesday and sentenced to two concurrent 99-year sentences.

The reunion lasted only minutes.But
it was a meeting a 12-year-old girl had been waiting for since she last
saw her mother more than a year ago, when the child and her brothers
were rescued from a putrid motel bathroom where they were imprisoned,
beaten and starved."I'm sorry I wasn't strong, like I should have
been," Abneris Santiago told her daughter after she decided to plead
guilty during her trial. "Tell your brothers and sister that I love
them."Santiago, 31, is accused of starving her children by giving
them barely enough food to survive, and failing to stop her boyfriend
from sexually abusing the girl. After Santiago told the judge she plans
to change her plea today, she and her daughter were allowed to meet, at
the girl's request, outside the jury's presence.They cried as they faced each other.
They wanted to hug, but bailiffs would not allow them to touch. "I love you,"
the girl whispered through her tears, her therapist at her side. "I
love you, too," Santiago responded, her face red from crying. "I wish I
could hold you now, but I can't. I'm glad I get to say goodbye. Always
remember that I love you."The girl sat in the second row of
benches in the courtroom gallery. Her mother sat near the defense
counsel table with about five feet between them. Both wore jeans and
short-sleeved shirts. The girl was in red and her mother in yellow.
The girl was speaking so softly that at times her mother said she couldn't hear her.Santiago
told the girl that the boyfriend, Alfred Santiago, would never hurt
them again. He was sentenced to two 99-year prison sentences earlier
this week for sexually abusing the girl and denying her food for months.
Charges of starving the two other children are pending.Mother and daughter
blew each other kisses and bailiffs whisked Abneris Santiago back into a courtroom jail cell.
The daughter left the courtroom in tears, her therapist still at her side.As
they spoke, bailiffs hovered and Judge John Nelms sat on the bench.
Prosecutors Eren Price and Carmen White spoke quietly across the room,
and Santiago's defense attorney, James Jamison, left the courtroom in
the middle of their talk.Earlier, Nelms told the jury that she
had decided to change her plea to guilty but would not do so until this
morning. She is pleading guilty to causing her daughter serious bodily
harm and faces a life sentence. She could still be tried on charges of
harming the boys.The children – then ages 11, 10 and 5 – were
rescued July 2, 2009, from the Budget Suites near Love Field after an
uncle called police. They were emaciated, and several witnesses have
compared them to Holocaust survivors. Another child, the 1-year-old
daughter of Alfred Santiago and Abneris Santiago, was healthy and
unharmed. The other three children each had different fathers.Abneris
Santiago's decision to change her plea came moments after the girl
testified that her mother beat her when the girl told her about the
repeated rapes by Alfred Santiago.The girl also testified about
the abuse, and about how she thought she would die in the bathroom.
Abneris Santiago told Nelms that she would not get a fair trial because
of media coverage of the case and that she didn't want her daughter to
be questioned further."I've been through so much ... out of one
nightmare and into another," Santiago told Nelms. "Me and my children
have been through enough."The jurors wept as the girl testified.
She begged them not to send her mother to prison."I
really don't think she did anything wrong," the girl sobbed. "She might
have given me whoopins, but she doesn't deserve to go to jail." Before
the girl took the stand, her therapist, Ashley Lind, told the jury that
the child still "dearly loves her mother" and that the child would
probably try to protect her mother on the witness stand.
"It's really hard for her to reconcile that this person she loved so much
could allow this to happen," Lind said.At times, the girl will say,
"My mom never did anything wrong." At other times, she'll say,
"Why didn't she help us?"And that's what the girl said Thursday.