A 10-year-old girl in Arizona suffered brutal beatings and torturous punishments, including being forced to do “laps and planks” around their apartment, as a form of discipline from her parents, according to prosecutors. The child tried fabricating “stories to protect their parents” before eventually succumbing to the abuse, authorities report.

Prosecutors in Apache County are seeking to jointly try Rebekah Baptiste’s biological father and stepmother, Richard Baptiste and Anicia Woods, for her death last month, according to court documents received by Law&Crime. The couple is facing charges for Rebekah’s alleged murder and abuse, as well as abuse charges concerning her two siblings, who are 8 and 6, as outlined in the documents.

Baptiste and Woods, both of whom remained in custody on Thursday, are accused of subjecting Rebekah and the other children to severe exercises within their apartment and other cruel punishments. The children’s teachers noticed signs of abuse and reported it to state authorities, prosecutors indicate.

On July 27, Baptiste and Woods took an “unresponsive and unconscious” Rebekah to a small medical facility in the Holbrook area, and she was then transported to a hospital “due to the severity of her condition,” according to the court documents. She passed away the following day from injuries doctors attribute to “non-accidental trauma.”

Baptiste and Woods were both detained on July 29 and charged with multiple offenses related to Rebekah’s death, police state. The couple had resided in a secluded area of rural Apache County with the children, according to police.

Rebekah’s abuse got so bad at one point that she “jumped out of the second story window at their apartment in Phoenix” to get away from it, prosecutors say. Her parents claimed “she was running away from us” and said she was “gonna run to the well because she would at least be able to get water and maybe find somebody there” who could possibly help her, according to prosecutors.

“In their statements, both Defendants admit to use of exercise as punishment, as well as spanking and hitting the children with a belt on multiple occasions,” the court documents say. “Baptiste described hitting R.B. with the belt approximately 10 times, with a pain level between 1-10 at a 7, and said he used ‘excessive force.'”

As police probed the parents over Rebekah’s death, investigators found that Baptiste and Woods’ children had appeared at school with “marks, scratches or bruises” on their bodies, and they complained about the “physical discipline of laps and planks, and not being fed” multiple times between November 2023 and May 2025, according to prosecutors.

When school professionals asked the children about the alleged abuse, they changed their stories to protect the parents, prosecutors said.

“For instance, [the 8-year-old] said he got scratched on the neck because he did not clean up, and the following day, the 6-year-old changed his story completely, stating ‘his mom didn’t scratch him because he wasn’t cleaning, it was because he was playing outside, and he was falling and mom tried catching him,'” court documents stated.

“My mom was mad at me and accidentally scratched me,” the 8-year-old allegedly told an educator. “Never mind, she didn’t do that, I just fell.”

DCS officials report that at the time of Rebekah’s death, the family was being investigated for an open complaint filed on May 19, the agency says in a fatality summary report.

“An investigation was initiated, and efforts were made to locate the family without success. The Department was continuing efforts to locate the family when the report of the near fatality incident was received.”

DCS says the May 2025 report was centered on abuse that Rebekah’s siblings were allegedly subjected to. The department has reports dating back to 2015 of alleged abuse and concerns that people had, but evidence was never found to “support” it, according to the DCS summary report.

The most recent report involving Rebekah was made on Jan. 16 and alleged that Baptiste would have her “run as a form of punishment, while not allowing her bathroom or water breaks,” according to officials. “The DCS investigation did not result in evidence to support the allegation. The allegations were unsubstantiated.”