Mother and father who introduced their unresponsive new child to an Orange County hospital in 2020 have been convicted of felony little one abuse this week, on expenses they uncovered the child to excessive warmth and chilly and failed to offer him essential nourishment, inflicting extreme mind harm that left the kid a quadriplegic, and unable to speak or see.
John Andres Gonzalez, 38, and Jaqueline Navarro, 45, have been every convicted of felony little one abuse and endangerment, with an enhancement for inflicting nice bodily damage to a baby beneath 5, in accordance with the Orange County district lawyer’s workplace. They every face a most sentence of 12 years in jail.
Prosecutors mentioned the couple thought of themselves “vegan mucus-free fruitarians,” which seems to confer with perception in a eating regimen geared toward eradicating mucus from the physique. They have been additionally followers of naturopathy, prosecutors mentioned, which usually means using a extra holistic strategy to stopping and treating illness by addressing root causes.
However Gonzalez and Navarro appeared to make use of misguided and excessive views associated to those practices, together with that the physique may heal itself and that breast milk was poisonous, in accordance with prosecutors and lawsuits concerning the case. They might solely feed the child soy-based components, vegatables and fruits, prosecutors mentioned. In a lawsuit, his paternal grandmother mentioned the couple tried to maintain the child on a plant-based eating regimen, and primarily fed him blended bananas and dates with honey.
Medical professionals, together with naturopaths, advocate breastfeeding a child throughout their first six months of life for optimum diet, or utilizing components nearly solely.
Inside weeks of their son’s start, the couple additionally started placing him in high-temperature saunas and ice baths, prosecutors mentioned.
Orange County authorities grew to become concerned within the case when the couple introduced their limp, unresponsive son to Hoag Hospital Emergency Room in Newport Seaside, the place they’d been on trip. The couple lived in Lindsay, in Tulare County.
“The child was grey in coloration, emaciated, and catatonic,” in accordance with the assertion from prosecutors. “Emergency room docs found the boy had extraordinarily low blood sugar ranges and suffered from hypoxia and fixed seizures.”
Additional checks confirmed that he had not been fed correctly, prosecutors mentioned. However even throughout the hospital keep, Gonzalez objected to many life-saving remedies and mentioned he “believed that hunger would result in therapeutic,” the prosecutors’ assertion mentioned.
The mind harm the boy suffered is everlasting, docs reported, inflicting him to be a quadriplegic, blind and unable to speak, stroll or eat on his personal. The boy is now 5 and beneath the care of his paternal grandmother.
The grandmother had been involved about her grandson quickly after he was born, and had repeatedly known as the Tulare County Division of Baby Welfare Companies to report potential abuse or neglect.
She filed a lawsuit in opposition to the county’s welfare company, claiming the company failed to guard her grandson, ensuing within the little one’s everlasting mind harm. That case was settled in 2023 for $32 million {dollars}, which on the time was believed to be the most important settlement obtained from a baby protecting providers company in California.
“This harmless little one suffered from nearly the primary breath he took due to his dad and mom’ beliefs that hunger would remedy him,” Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer mentioned in a press release. “As a substitute of curing him, they robbed him of his sight, his means to take his first steps, to say his first phrases, and his probability to see the world. … Tragically, he won’t ever get to expertise any of these milestones as a result of his dad and mom starved him practically to loss of life as an alternative of giving him the nourishment he so desperately wanted.”
Gonzalez and Navarro are presently being held with out bail and will probably be sentenced July 25.
