Daughter Claims Water Torture Used As Punishment By Mother

The teenage daughter of a woman accused in the scalding death of her 3-year-old child testified today that her mother often tied up her children and used both hot and cold water to inflict punishment on them.

The 13-year-old, speaking in a barely audible voice and with her head down and her face covered by her long, dark hair, said the defendant, Yolanda Guadalupe Pena, 40, used blue yarn to tie her up and left her in a closet for hours at a time while out of the La Quinta home on Miles Avenue.

She also told Deputy District Attorney Arthur C. Hester that her mother, who wept at the defense table as her daughter spoke and was shackled at the right hand and at the feet, often tied up her younger sister Delilah, using tape to bind her wrists and her ankles.

The older child said she would remain alone in the closet for “several hours” while her sister was kept in a separate closet, sometimes inside a “bucket” used for storing clothes.

The girl said she would face punishment for poor grades in school and for what her mother believed were lies. She said her mother did not tell her why her younger sister, Delilah Urrutia, died on June 25, 2009, at the home.

According to authorities, the preschooler had first- and second-degree burns on her face, neck, chest, back and arms.

Under questioning by the prosecutor, she said that her mother would subject the children to “boiling” water at times when the two faced punishment in the bathtub. Later, Deputy Public Defender Tom Cavanaugh asked by “boiling” did the witness mean “really hot” water and she answered yes.

The older child said her sister, who slept on a beige, floral-style rug in the living room while tied to a chair, had marks on her wrists and knees at times, and that her fingernails seemed to be disappearing.

“Did you ever see your mom hit Delilah with anything?” Hester asked.

“With hangers,” the witness replied.

The older girl said she was not present in the home when her sister died last summer.

In addition to the murder charge, Pena is also facing allegations of torture, great bodily injury to a child and infliction of injury on a child.

Following the child’s death, Pena told authorities that the 3-year-old had “accidentally tipped a pot of extremely hot water on herself,” which she said was on the kitchen counter. Investigators determined, however, that Pena had not sought immediate treatment for her daughter — whose body showed signs of repeated physical abuse — until she discovered that Delilah had stopped breathing. The child had been “misbehaving,” according to the mother.