A 41-year-old man was arrested on Wednesday in southern California, accused of kidnapping and abusing a minor for 10 years, after the girl was able to contact her sister through Facebook.
The kidnapped woman told the police that she was forced to marry her kidnapper, Isidro García and that they had a son, according to the Daily Mail.
According to the same source, the woman, now 25 years old, said she was kidnapped and was kept captive for over 10 years, a period during which García sexually abused her and treated her with violence.
The victim, whose identity was not revealed to the media, was kidnapped when she was 15 in 2004 by García, who was then her mother's boyfriend, according to the Santa Ana Police Department, reported The Huffington Post.
In that year, the mother reported her daughter as missing after telling the police that she was attacked by García before he drugged her daughter and escaped with her.
According to The Huffington Post, Isidro García had kept the girl captive inside a garage to keep her from running, and as the days and years passed, the man convinced the victim that her family had stopped looking for her and that she tried to contact them they would all be deported.
For over 10 years, García changed his residence to avoid being located by the police, and during all this time the minor was a victim of physical and sexual violence. García forced the woman to marry him in 2012 and they have a child.
Although the police said that the victim might have had an opportunity to escape, investigators think that years of physical and mental abuse might have stopped her from doing so. Finally, days before, the young woman was able to contact her sister through Facebook and then gathered strength to contact the police.
"I was 15, I couldn't do anything. I'm very happy, God allowed me to be with my family. That is what I've wanted this whole time. I cried for them all this time, for my mother and my sisters," the woman told the Daily Mail.