At a court hearing this week, the mother in Texas who is facing felony charges said she had “adequate food for everyone in the home” and was “never violent.” She was accused of locking her 7-year-old daughter in a dark closet where she couldn’t get food or use the bathroom because she was “always getting into stuff” and had bladder problems.
Virginia Gonzales, 33, admitted on Tuesday in the 331st Criminal District Court that she was wrong. This came as the Travis County District Attorney’s Office asked the judge to raise Gonzales’ bond from $75,000 to $250,000.
When Gonzales said, “I know what I’ve done was wrong,” she seemed to put the blame on her other kids for the claimed abuse.
She told the judge, “I told them not to let her out of the bedroom but not the closet.” “We’d see her doing something bad in the bathroom.” That made it easy for my sons to watch her.
Gonzales is charged with causing serious bodily injury to a child after her daughter was found in the closet for several weeks, dirty and badly malnourished. Police say Gonzales has another child who has been missing since 2017. The girl, who weighed only 29 pounds, was found at her mother’s house in Austin by her grandma.
On top of that, Gonzales is accused of telling the girl’s six brothers to lock her in the small room, which is about 3 feet by 1 foot, 10 inches. The children are between the ages of 2 and 14. According to police, they told their grandmother that Gonzales was punishing the girl for “getting into stuff” and eating things she wasn’t meant to.
The girl’s 10-year-old brother is said to have said that she could only eat one corn dog a day and drink half a cup of water. Her brothers say she went to the bathroom and pooped in the closet. Detective Ryan Constable from the APD’s Child Abuse Unit talked about her state in court on Wednesday.
“The fat in her cheeks was nonexistent,” he noted. “Her body had used those stores to sustain itself.”
During the meeting, Gonzales said she wanted to “fight” for her kids and show that she deserved to have them in her life. She said she “never spanked them” and didn’t hurt them in any other way.
The mother said, “I’m ready to do whatever it takes to keep my kids.”
The kids are being cared for by police in Austin while they continue to look for Ava Marie Gonzales, Gonzales’s missing child who went missing when she was 9 years old in 2017.
Police say the closet victim’s brain was permanently damaged and she went hungry for a long time because of the imprisonment, which was found in April. The girl was supposedly being held in a room that was blocked off.
As Judge Chantal Eldridge put it, “it is horrifying.”
It is alleged that Gonzales hurt three children and held one of them against their will. Prosecutors who wanted to raise Gonzales’ bond said she was a flight risk and called witnesses to the stand, including Gonzales’ own mother, who said she would run away.
Valerie Gonzales, who had raised the suspect since she was 13, said that Gonzales had a history of not showing up to court.
“She didn’t show up for a weed charge, you think she’s going to show up for this?” It was Valerie Gonzales. “I know my daughter, she’ll run from this.”
In the end, Eldridge agreed with the prosecutors and raised Gonzales’ bond to $250,000. She was put on trial right away and pleaded not guilty. Her trial was set for January 2026.
The Austin Police Department wants anyone who knows anything about the missing sister or brother to get in touch with them.
