A teenager who was reported missing for eight years was kept as a sex slave by his own mother, it has been claimed.
Janie Santana allegedly subjected her son Rudy Farias to physical, mental and emotional abuse while he was supposedly missing, including making him play the role of "daddy and husband".
Quanell X, a community activist in Houston, Texas, where the scandal emerged, said: "She would ask him to play daddy. She told him that he had to be the husband."
He said the disturbing details were shared by Farias while she was being interviewed by investigators in Houston, reports the Mirror.
He claimed that Santana hid her son for nearly a decade, lied to him and abused him. She would allegedly take him to her work as a security guard at night and hid the youngster during the day.
Farias went missing while out walking his dogs on March 6, 2015. Eight years later, on June 29 this year, he was found on a water stoop at a church, in terrible physical condition and unable to speak, his mum said.
However, neighbours and relatives claimed that they knew Farias wasn't missing, as they had seen him at the house, and became suspicious.
His cousin, Cassandra Lopez, said: "We always knew in our hearts that he wasn't really missing."
She told the police in 2018 that Farias was staying with Santana, and that their grandmother had seen and spoken to the "missing" youngster.
"I was in shock," she added. "I was like, I couldn't believe it. "I mean, I was glad [when he was found], but I just was wondering what was going to unfold from it. Like, what was the story going to be behind [his disappearance]?"
Santana said that she expects to be arrested. She said: "When he first went missing, he didn’t report it to the police. And they are trying to say that he might have done some crimes. Which he didn’t.
"Now, they want to arrest me. Because they said I was hiding him."
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