Man sentenced for sexual abuse of daughter

The emergency call came in as a domestic violence assault: A man had stabbed his girlfriend in the parking lot of a Las Vegas hospital.

But as detectives began to investigate, they unearthed a terrible family secret. The suspect was not the victim’s boyfriend but her father, who had been sexually assaulting her for nearly two decades and had fathered her three children.

The assaults, the victim told authorities, started when she was 6 years old and living in Los Angeles. She said her father, a martial arts instructor, threatened to kill her if she told anyone and kept her a prisoner at home, monitoring her movements using surveillance cameras and delivering fierce beatings during paranoid rages.

Today, the daughter, now 29, sat silently in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom as a judge sentenced Lindolfo Thibes to prison for 109 years to life in what police describe as the most heinous case of child abuse they have encountered.

As her father was led away in handcuffs, the woman wept quietly and embraced her younger brother, also the victim of years of beatings at the hands of their father. “I hope he suffers,” said the woman, who asked that her name not be published because she is a sexual abuse victim. “I want him to die in there in jail because that’s what he did to me. He confined me.”

Thibes, a burly man with a shaved head and scraggly gray goatee, said nothing about his guilt or innocence during today's hearing but offered a litany of rambling complaints to the judge, all the while referring to himself in the third person.

Acting as his own attorney, Thibes, 48, said his case should have been dismissed long ago on procedural grounds. He said he has been hallucinating and “believes that shadows are out to get him.” He called his trial a “kangaroo court” and said his conviction was the result of fraudulent evidence and perjured testimony.

But a prosecutor said DNA tests confirmed the daughter’s account, proving that Thibes was the woman’s father, as well as the father of her three children. Those children, all girls, range in age from 4 to 11. The genetic evidence and harrowing testimony from his daughter during his trial in February led a jury to convict Thibes of multiple counts of rape and other sexual assaults committed over the course of a decade.

“He’s probably the sickest suspect I ever had,” said Torrance Police Det. Rick Carr, a 28-year veteran who was the lead investigator on the case. “This poor woman endured just some unbelievable torture and horrendous acts.”

In an interview with The Times, the victim said her father rigged the family’s South Los Angeles home with surveillance cameras inside and out. Under her bed were motion detectors that set off an alarm in her father’s bedroom when she got up.

As a teenager, she was not allowed to leave the house. Her father frequently grew paranoid and accused her of trying to escape or secretly meeting boys behind his back.

 Enraged, he would beat her and her brother with a baseball bat on their feet, she said. In the country illegally from Brazil, she said she feared what would happen if she reported the abuse but was also terrified of the consequences if authorities did not believe her. “He [said he] would kill me if he ever got his hands on me if I ever told,” she said. “He used to tell me he was going to cut my head off.”

--Jack Leonard

Photo: Lindolfo Thibes in court today at his sentencing. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Joy, Sacramento]

I hear that child-molesters have a very hard time in prison -- the inmates beat them, torture them.... Kind of gives me a warm fuzzy glow inside.

[Kylara]

... I'm very, very glad and all that he's basically in prison forever, because this is a success of our justice system, right? Jury of his peers convicted him, he's guilty, prison. He'll never come out.

But. I can't say anything too inflammatory, but. Ohhh, there's just not enough justice in the world. Disgusting, foul man who left a legacy of pain and hate. I hope his children are okay.

[Richard Ivey]

It shows the power of the wing nuts who favor having vigilantes at the border and among the local police. They would deport the rape victim/daughter so that the rapist father could go free. This is a rare instance of justice.

[GeneTierney]

*She's my sister. No, she's my daughter.* A scene right out of the brilliant film, *Chinatown.*

Thibes isn't even human. He's a monster.

[Nick]

No amount of punishment will ever bring about justice for the victims in this case.

This monster should be given the death penalty as soon as possible.

[jason]

Wow, what a sicko. It's too bad they don't allow the death penalty for this type of case.

[argos]

That is really sick

[Jimi]

But they said they only came here to work? Illegal aliens need to be deported, no matter what place they came from. Don't we have enough home grown perverts without importing more?

[WonderWoman]

Dear Lord Jesus, I pray to God this woman's family (her children and brother) come out of this. Perversity in and of itself is enough to make your ears ring, but hate for "illegal immigrants" is not the focus of this article.

Where in the United States of America are six year old little girls permitted to work? That comment from Jimi was uncalled for. I'm thankful the man is going to spend the rest of his sorry life in prison.