A Texas mom has been jailed for 75 years after she tortured a woman for months by locking her in a dog crate, starving her and dousing her in boiling water.
Alicia Calderon, 37, was sentenced Tuesday over the “sadistic torture” of the then-24-year-old after she hoodwinked the young woman into living with her in a trailer in Wylie, north of Dallas, prosecutors said.
“Calderon tricked the victim into living with her and then controlled her with unthinkable torture,” Collin County District Attorney Greg Willis said in the wake of her sentencing.
“She severely burned the victim’s arms, chest, and back by pouring a pot of boiling water on her. She also deprived her of food, locked her in a dog crate, and cut off her communication to the outside world.”
The brutalization started in 2019 when the victim, identified by FOX4 as Simone Valdez-Junkin, moved into her abuser’s family trailer to help care for Calderon’s children and a disabled elderly woman in exchange for free rent, prosecutors said.
After several months, Calderon started taking away the victim’s phone, restricting her food and eventually locked her in a room with the elderly woman.
The torture escalated when the victim, who had lost more than half her body weight by then, was caught stealing some of Calderon’s food in July 2021, prosecutors said.
Calderon locked the victim in the dog crate and poured boiling water over her legs as punishment. Then, several months later, the abuser doused the victim’s arms, chest and back with boiling water again.
The young woman was left with severe burns, which Calderon refused to let her seek treatment for, according to prosecutors.
The victim’s family alerted authorities in February last year after the young woman managed to get access to a phone and send her stepfather a Facebook message begging for help.
When authorities responded to the trailer, they found the malnourished victim weighing just 68 pounds. She was also covered in second and third-degree burns and had her head shaved, prosecutors said.
“It took me about a week and a half before I really could register that that was my daughter,” the victim’s mom, Farrah Junkin, told FOX4. “She was just skin. Literally skin hanging off of her bones.”
The young woman, who underwent multiple surgeries and skin grafts, spent six weeks recovering in the hospital in the wake of her rescue.
Meanwhile, the elderly relative’s condition had deteriorated so badly that the responding officers initially thought she was dead.
During Calderon’s sentencing, prosecutors said the abuser had stolen nearly $78,000 from the disabled woman via social security checks and inheritance.
Calderon blew the stolen money on tattoo shops, a party rental place and new tire rims, prosecutors said.
The relationship between Calderon and the elderly woman wasn’t immediately clear. The elderly victim’s condition also wasn’t known.
Calderon was sentenced after a jury found her guilty of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon causing serious bodily injury to a household member.
Prosecutors allege her husband, Joseph Calderon, was also involved and have since charged him with elderly exploitation and abuse.
He is currently out on bond awaiting trial.