How Could You? Hall of Shame-Sylvia and Anthony Vasquez UPDATED

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.

This case has a long, horrendous history. The current crime is from the adoptee Anthony Vasquez, 19. On January 20, 2012, a electronic technician was reviewing January 17, 2012 elevator video footage from a parking garage and saw Anthony drag an unconscious 23-year-old woman into the elevator. He raped her for hours.

Anthony was convicted last week “of two felony counts – rape and sexual  battery by restraint. Prosecuting Attorney Paula Waldman says the  teen will serve half the sentence, most likely starting at the  Wasco State Prison in Kern County.

Vasquez’s mother, Sylvia, claims her adopted son suffers from  Reactive Attachment Disorder, the lack of a consistent, loving   caregiver. The Santa Barbara woman claims Vasquez had disturbingly  violent tendencies by the age of 6; she claims he killed the  family dog and molested his adopted sister by the age of 11.”

This article barely touches on his history and surprisingly glosses over his adoptive mother’s conviction.

“Vasquez herself was the subject of a high-profile, criminal case  after her arrest in 2006 for child endangerment. Prosecutors say  the mother of five confined her four adopted children in cages and  forced them to use buckets as toilets.”

Man accused of raping unconscious woman in Santa Barbara parking elevator
[KSBY 1/31/12 by Shelby Rhodes]

Elevator Rapist Sentenced

[KEYT 6/15/12]

The whole story on Sylvia Vasquez is much, much worse. PoundPup has the 2006-2008 articles.

From PoundPup “Three children, a 13-year-old boy, a 9-year-old and a 6-year-old girl, adopted by Sylvia Jovanna Vasquez were being locked up in cages and were found to be malnourished and and were wearing clothes soiled with urine and feces. A 12-year-old girl, also adopted, was being injected with a puberty-blocking drug, Lupron.
In 1982 Sylvia Jovanna Vasquez had kidnapped a girl from Mexico and using Child Protective Services stationary she removed three children from a Mexican orphanage in 1986. In 1990 she applied for a foster care permit, which was refused, because of her previous conduct. Despite being aware of this past Judy Taege of California state adoption agency allowed Vasquez to adopt four children.”

 

See http://poundpuplegacy.org/node/23199

Additionally, the following details are from the articles cited on PoundPup:

• Sylvia owned a daycare
• the six-year-old girl was forced to sleep in a “metal-mesh cabinet that measured 3 feet by 5 feet and could be secured by an outside lock”
• “the children were locked in their rooms for “extended” periods and were fed “minimal diets of bread, water and peanut butter.”
• “They rarely if ever ventured outside.”
•  the 12-year-old girl was healthy and clean
•  Anthony “stayed in a downstairs room that was found to contain a large bag of rotting food, a bed, toothbrush, bottle of water and a bucket he apparently used as a toilet.”
•  The 9-year-old girl “was held in a 5-foot-by-4-foot plywood room built inside a downstairs storage area and containing a window covered with wire mesh and a lockable door”
• “Friends of Vasquez contended the former childcare provider struggled heroically to deal with an impossible situation, even sending [Anthony] off for an 18-month stint at a private institution in Utah specializing in behavioral problems.”
• “three of the four were locked in at night because of severe behavioral problems exacerbated by years in unstable foster care situations and several failed adoptions.”
• “She is also accused of injecting the 12-year-old girl with the puberty-blocking drug Lupron and detectives allegedly found a digital camera in Vasquez’s room with lewd photos of the girl, according to court documents.”
• Sylvia sent coded letters to the children during the trial which landed her in jail.
• Sylvia pled no contest on January 17, 2007. She was released “until sentencing in March despite prosecution pleas to keep her jailed on $1 million bail.”
• “Under cross-examination from the prosecution, the girl also described Vasquez meting out punishments.In response to the prosecutor’s questions, the girl said she was fed raw eggs mixed with an oil, which the defense lawyer asserted was the Ensure food supplement.The girl made disturbing, but inconsistent claims on the stand. She confirmed that she wrote a number of letters saying in one that she was forced by her mom to lick up the mixture after she threw it up. She also testified that she wrote letters about wanting to cause harm to her family and her dog, adding she never really meant to do so.Sometimes she grew hungry or was not able to reach the bathroom, she testified. However, she later explained that there was a variety of food available at the house.At one point, she testified her mother put her hand on a hot stove burner.

  “Do you think I’d be dumb enough to put my hand on the stove?” the girl asked. “She’s like, ‘I need to show you the consequences.’ She got my hand and put it on. I think it was because I didn’t get my homework done.”

  However, the girl also confirmed she wrote in a letter that her mother warned her not to put her hand on the hot burner and she did so anyway.

  In regard to the prosecution allegation that Vasquez made her daughter eat dog foot [sic], the girl replied: “I was the one who made myself eat dog food. I still like to eat dog food.”

• “Vasquez ticked off a list of incidents involving her 14-year-old adopted son and her adopted daughters—aged 7, 10 and 13—that gave her reason to take drastic action to “protect” others: walking in on her 10-year-old urinating in the refrigerated milk container, catching her son allegedly trying to rape the youngest girl, hearing from the boy that he had allegedly raped and killed the family cat and poisoned the family dog, learning from one of her helpers that the youngest had supposedly hit her with a rock-filled sock, or how one of the girls had allegedly attempted to molest the other with a bottle.Dudley pounced on these and other responses, which contradicted parts of testimony both from the children themselves and from the half-dozen or so other witnesses. Why, Dudley asked Vasquez, had she not followed the recommendations of several professionals and the various books she had read and taken her children to therapy? Vasquez responded that she didn’t think it would work.Why had she not, as another tactic suggested, put the children on medication for the disorder? She said she was told there was no medicine. And as for their physical health, why had she decided to have the boy circumcised at age 10, against a pediatrician’s advice, or begin injecting one of the girls with anti-growth drugs provided by a Tijuana doctor when her local doctor had said there was no need? To these, she said she felt it was best for the well-being of the children.During her cross-examination, Dudley also focused on the “treatments” Vasquez, 51, had used. Did any of the professionals she spoke with or did any of the literature she had read about RAD suggest locking children in enclosures with buckets for toilets? After some pause, Vasquez replied no.”
• Marisol Plasencia Garcia worked for nine months in the house as a caregiver. “The youngest girl, according to Garcia, was kept locked in a cage in the “cat room” morning, noon, and night, where she was fed a steady diet of peanut butter sandwiches, cheese sandwiches with mayonnaise, and butter sandwiches. There were bananas and fruit as well, accompanied by bottled water and very small servings of milk. In lieu of a toilet, the youngest used a white plastic bucket to urinate and defecate.Garcia testified that the girl wore only two sets of clothes, which frequently reeked of urine, during the nine months she worked there, and that the boots didn’t even fit, being too big. In addition, Garcia said the girl was not allowed upstairs, except when she was taken outside in the yard to receive an outdoor shower. In those instances, Garcia said, the girl was given a shower while dressed in her clothes, and was not given a fresh set of clothes to replace her wet ones afterwards.”
• “All this, Garcia testified, stood in stark contrast to the treatment afforded the second oldest of the four kids, an astonishingly gifted classical violinist and an accomplished figure skater. She was allowed the run of the house, said Garcia, and could eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted to. (Investigators found many nude photographs and one nude oil painting of this girl in sexually provocative poses. Vasquez testified that the girl wanted these images of herself. This girl was also given injections of a drug to prevent the onset of puberty and delay her growth.)”
• ” Vasquez had burned one of her adopted daughters with a match, inflicted bruises by pinching her, and made her sleep on the floor “with rats” where the girl sustained flea bites. Even the one adopted girl who was Vasquez’s favorite was abused, Dudley charged. In this case, the girl was given injections of a drug designed to delay puberty and was the focus of 71 nude and semi-nude photographs that Dudley characterized as “child pornography.”
• Sylvia was sentenced to “10 years in prison, she will be required only to serve one year behind lock and key at the Santa Barbara County Jail. “
• Sylvia has been paid ” $173,637 over eight years ” from CPS.
• “Taege had heard how in 1982 Vasquez had kidnapped a young girl named Flor – then about nine years old – from Mexico and brought her to Santa Barbara. Vasquez, who had been the girl’s tutor, went to Flor’s school and took her with her. She bought Flor new clothes, spreading the ones Flor had been wearing by a beach so that it appeared the girl had drowned. When Vasquez mysteriously showed up at Child Protective Services – where she worked as a receptionist – with her brand-new nine-year-old daughter, her coworkers took note. When Mexican authorities contacted the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department about the missing girl, it didn’t take long to connect the dots . At the time, Vasquez claimed she was rescuing Flor from the clutches of a sexually abusive relative. Although Flor now denies any sexual abuse ever took place, at the time, she did say an uncle had touched her improperly. But investigators found it suspicious that Vasquez never obtained treatment for Flor that would be suitable for a victim of sexual abuse”
• “Taege was also aware of how, in 1986, Vasquez had written a letter on Child Protective Services stationery that enabled her to remove three children from a Mexican orphanage in Tijuana. She was exposed when the orphanage called her work asking how the children were doing. According to Laura Cleaves , who investigated the case for prosecutor Joyce Dudley , Vasquez was not fired, but instead allowed to resign. Cleaves said she knows Taege was aware of both these incidents before approving Vasquez as an adoptive parent because Taege told her so. Cleaves said Taege explained there was no paper trail  — no charges filed, no conviction obtained – to confirm these accounts.”
• ” In these, Taege admitted she was given a letter written by a psychiatrist then on the county payroll – Sylvia Warholic – dated October 12, 1998, indicating Vasquez had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and borderline personality disorder – both serious mental illnesses – in the 1980s. Warholic’s letter also indicated Vasquez had been hospitalized because of these problems two separate times in 1983. These documents indicate that Taege was troubled by Warholic’s letter and referred the matter to her supervisors. But Taege also admitted she never had Vasquez undergo any independent psychological evaluation prior to the adoption of the kids to Vasquez. When asked if she ever asked Vasquez about Warholic’s concerns, Taege is quoted in court documents stating, “I don’t recall speaking to her about the letter.”
• Sylvia is said to have used Nancy Thomas Parenting techniques that she read in the book. No indication that she took any child to the actual therapist.
• Sylvia was released from  jail in August 2007. “Vasquez served a total of 237 days. She got 120 days off for good behavior and work time, plus another eight days for jail overcrowding and early release.”

REFORM Puzzle Pieces

Update: “Judge Frank Ochoa refused Sylvia Vasquez’s request that he cut in half both her fine and her term of probation in connection with her felony conviction five years ago on child endangerment charges regarding four foster children she kept in her home.

Vasquez gained considerable notoriety when it was discovered that she’d been locking some of her four foster kids in cages and giving them buckets and outdoor showers in lieu of bathroom access. Another — a violin prodigy — had been injected with growth retarding hormones to keep her in a perpetually pre-pubescent state. Vasquez — who also ran a popular day care facility out of her home — argued at the time that several of her foster children suffered from such severe emotional attachment disorders that they posed a physical and sexual threat to the others and had to be locked up.

Vasquez was in court Monday asking Judge Ochoa to reduce her felony conviction to a misdemeanor, expunge her record, and cut in half the ten years of probation to which she was sentenced as well as the $10,000 in restitution she was ordered to pay. Acting as her own attorney, Vasquez said she could not obtain work given her criminal record, that her home had been foreclosed upon, and that she’d stayed out of trouble with the law. Vasquez spent about half a year in County Jail, and since her release has done missionary work in Mexico.

During the trial, it emerged that state foster care officials had reason to be concerned Vasquez was psychologically unfit to be a foster parent, but was allowed to “adopt” especially challenging kids anyway. Since her conviction, at least one of the locked up foster kids — now an adult — was found guilty for raping a woman in a public elevator in downtown Santa Barbara. In declining Vasquez’s request that her probation be commuted, Judge Ochoa argued her crime had been too heinous and the damage inflicted too egregious.”

Judge Denies Request From Foster Mom Who Locked Kids in Cages

[Santa Barbara Independent 3/5/13 by Nick Welsh]