Woman sentenced to 18 years for ‘torture’ of two stepsons who were hung upside down from ceiling in Toronto basement

WARNING: This article contains graphic details that some readers may find upsetting.

“This is not a case of child abuse. It is a case of child torture,” a Toronto judge said in sentencing the stepmother of two boys to 18 years in prison on Friday.

“Over the course of more than two-and-a-half years, they were beaten, burned, hung, sleep-deprived, deprived of food, force-fed and emotionally neglected” by their father and stepmother, wrote Superior Court Justice Kelly Byrne in her ruling.

“There was no pause in the suffering they were subjected to,” she said, noting that both children had countless scars, bruises and burns in various stages of healing all over their bodies when they were rescued and examined at SickKids hospital.

The boys described their lives as a “living hell” that only ended when the older boy escaped in June 2019 and contacted his mother on Facebook, who then got her own mother to contact police.

There is a publication ban on the identity of the two boys, who were 10 and 13 when the abuse began. They moved to Canada with their father and stepmother in August 2016 from Mexico, Byrne wrote. They lived with the stepmother’s two sons, aged 12 and 14, in a two-bedroom house in the Junction neighbourhood of Toronto.

They were supposed to have regular contact with their mother over video calls and with their maternal grandmother who lived in Toronto but almost immediately their stepmother stopped this from happening, convincing the boys their mother and grandmother no longer loved them.

The stepmother, now 38 and employed as a personal support worker since 2013, was the “creator and driving force” behind the violence, Byrne said, noting that the children had previously had a loving relationship with their father and mother.

The father pleaded guilty to several offences linked to the abuse of the two boys at the start of trial in 2021, while the stepmother claimed that he was the only abuser in the home and that she cared for the boys like they were her own children.

Byrne found the stepmother guilty of 10 criminal charges including assault with a weapon, sexual assault and failing to provide the necessaries of life. The father, who Byrne called “equally responsible,” has not yet been sentenced.

Crowns Brigid McCallum and Pam Santora sought a sentence of 20 years, while defence lawyer Ingrid Grant argued for a sentence in the range of five to 12 years.

The boys, then 15 and 18, testified, with the help of a support dog Iggy, that their father carried out most of the “physical punishments” at the direction of their stepmother who would say the boys had done something wrong or not done a chore properly.

What began as verbal scolding progressed to the boys being beaten with a belt, hands, an extension cable, a large metal spoon, marshmallow sticks and barbecue tongs. Their fingers and stomachs were squeezed with pliers.

This would typically take place in the basement of the house so the other two boys would not hear, Byrne wrote.

Despite plenty of food available, they were given progressively less food than the stepmother’s two boys, but also force-fed for eating too slowly. If they took too long, they would have to eat hot chilli peppers. The older boy lost so much weight he looked younger than his age and his teachers noticed, signing him up for lunch and snack programs at school.

They slept on the floor, or in the basement, where they kept their clothes in garbage bags.

The stepmother forced them to stay awake until she came home from working night shifts, and monitored them via CCTV. If they did not comply, they were beaten, sometimes with a coffee mug because they were made to drink coffee to stay awake.

The older boy would often try to take more of the punishment to protect his younger brother — his “survival partner.”

They were cut with knives, and burned with a blade heated up on the stove. Once, the stepmother, held a knife to the older boy’s throat and threatened to kill him, called him a dog and said he was ungrateful. She also grabbed their genitals. She forced one boy to “wash” his feet in scalding water, leaving him with extreme scarring. He got no medical attention for this, he testified.

After about a year, the stepmother came up with a new form of punishment: hanging the boys upside down from a beam in the basement by one or both feet with a green rope. It could last a few hours or all night, leaving scars on their ankles or their feet swollen, the boys testified.

When asked how much force was needed to hang them, the older boy said they would climb a ladder and give over a foot to their father or stepmother — it was much worse if they did not comply.

“It was not just what he said but how he said it,” Byrne wrote, adding he included a disturbing amount of detail about the logistics. “He said it with such ease, like it was a normal, everyday part of their life…like he had given up resistance and surrendered to it. Which, in fact, he had.”

Their father testified evasively, Byrne wrote, and said if only the boys obeyed he would not have had to hurt them.

If they were injured in places that could not be covered up with clothes, such as their foreheads, the stepmother would be mad and not send them to school to evade detection.

However, the boys’ teachers noticed things were wrong: bruises on their faces, red eyes, weight loss, hunger, lack of good winter clothing, wearing long sleeves to hide bruises. This was reported to the school’s Children and Youth Worker who also was concerned and was checking in with the older boy to see if he was OK.

The Catholic Children’s Aid Society was contacted by the school and a meeting held with the father and stepmother where the stepmother offered reasonable explanations, the worker testified. She said she was told by CCAS that they investigated and the case was closed. Though teachers continued to report concerns, they were told CCAS had determined everything was fine in the home, Byrne wrote.

The boys said their stepmother instructed that when the CCAS worker questioned them, they had to lie or else their father would go to jail and they would be sent back to Mexico. The stepmother had previous experience with CAS with her other two children and knew to prepare the boys to lie, Byrne found.

When she did have to take the older boy to the doctor because the school had contacted CCAS, she remained in the room during the appointment.

The woman, who has two more very young children, went to “great lengths to cover up her crimes and protect herself from detection by authorities,” Byrne wrote.

Meanwhile the boys were entirely reliant on her and their father — they were just learning English, they were alienated from their loving family, and they were prevented from seeking help from their teachers, doctors and the CCAS.

The older boy ran away after a particularly abusive night. He said he hid under a car until 5 a.m. and then took transit to a public library, appearing under the age of 12 due to malnourishment. He arrived at 7 a.m. and waited until the library opened at 9 a.m. to use the computer to contact his mother.

“They endured the unspeakable,” Byrne wrote, but somehow they have grown into “remarkable young men” and are moving forward, with the ability to still see the good in life.

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