After years of torture, a Chester woman was convicted of abusing children she cared for

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a home tucked away on W. 8th Street in Chester became the site of tortuous abuse for three sisters.

The girls were beaten with bats and glassware, stabbed with knives and shattered pottery, and choked, sometimes to the point of unconsciousness. Their abuser, someone their parents trusted to care for them, carried out almost medieval punishments for perceived slights, prosecutors in Delaware County said.

One of the victims said Anais Munoz, 22, held a curling iron to her genitals, warning her she would only prolong the abuse if the girl screamed.

The details of Munoz’s abuse were revealed during her two-week trial before Delaware County Court Judge John P. Capuzzi Sr., which ended late last month with her conviction for aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and related crimes. The jurors acquitted Munoz of other counts of those crimes.

The girl, who was 10 years old at the time, said she still bears scars from being burned with the curling iron. It was the night before Halloween in 2021, she said, and she remembers being in excruciating pain as she trick-or-treated in her neighborhood.

To this day, wearing shorts or swimwear, she said, makes her anxious.

“This scar wasn’t created by choice, this scar was created from a monster,” the girl, now 15, testified. “I didn’t ask for this, I didn’t ask for any of this, I didn’t ask to even be in this courtroom right now.”

On other occasions, the girl said, Munoz would choke her with father’s belt until her face turned blue.

“I thought I was going to die,” she said. “I was begging her not to do it again, begging her with my everything. And she did it again.”

Still, the girls said that, fearful of Munoz, they lied and hid the injuries from their parents. The 15-year-old girl said she wanted Munoz to like her, and compared herself to a “puppy dog” seeking affection.

The victims’ injuries remained hidden until the fall of 2022, when Munoz burned the middle sister’s hand on a stove. Her teachers notified the county Department of Children and Youth, triggering an investigation, and Munoz was arrested months later.

Her attorneys, James Funt and Brandi McLauglhin, cast doubt on the victims’ testimony, saying they were unreliable and had suffered psychological trauma from what they experienced.

Funt suggested to jurors that the girls’ parents were the ones who abused them, and that they were being manipulated into blaming Munoz.

“The uncomfortable truth of this case is that everybody failed them,” the lawyer said in his closing arguments. “The teachers failed them, the CYS workers failed them, the police failed them, because clue after clue after clue revealed that what they were saying wasn’t true,” and their parents were the true culprits.

Assistant District Attorney Danielle Gallaher rejected that assertion. She said all of the forensic evidence matches the girls’ description of abuse at the hands of Munoz.

It was always clear, she said, who was responsible.

“This case is about how the defendant took her anger and resentment out on children who could be manipulated and led to believe they would never been believed by anyone,” Gallaher said. “The defendant wants you to believe these kids are crazy.”

The girl and her sisters testified that the abuse began shortly after Munoz came to live with them in 2020, and that it escalated in intensity in 2021. At the time, the girls were 7, 10, and 11.

In addition to the physical and mental abuse, Munoz would engaged in sex acts with the children, they said.

During some the violent episodes, Munoz would tell the girls she was under the possession of a demon named “Jessica,” using that to explain her abusive behavior, the girls said.

The oldest sister, now 16, said she lived in constant fear of Munoz, who sometimes would suffocate her with a pillow and body slam her into the ground.

In one instance, she said, Munoz repeatedly struck her so hard that her body eventually went limp, and she felt as if she couldn’t move.

Another witness, a boy who did not live in the house said he observed some of this abuse while Munoz babysat him there. During one incident, he said, Munoz choked him until he “saw white” and bit him on his left forearm.