A 10-year-old girl from Arizona may have endured abuse for a decade prior to her death last month. She passed away three days after being discovered unconscious and with numerous injuries in a wash in Holbrook.
The girl’s father, Richard Daniel Baptiste, aged 32, and his girlfriend, Anicia Woods, aged 29, informed investigators that a neighbor found the child in the wash on July 27, as reported by AZCentral.
Woods reportedly contacted emergency services, stating the girl was struggling to breathe and had run away. She succumbed to her injuries on July 30, leading to murder and child abuse charges against Woods and Baptiste.
As the inquiry progressed, child welfare authorities provided information suggesting that Rebekah and her two younger brothers might have suffered from prolonged abuse over several years.
The Arizona Department of Child Services disclosed through a comprehensive statement that law enforcement scrutinized the family “at least five times” without leading to charges or arrests.
“The underlying reason was a lack of adequate evidence to support the allegations,” according to the state agency. “Similarly, DCS conducted multiple investigations into the Baptiste family, but there was insufficient evidence to justify the children’s removal in most instances.”
The children were removed from the home in 2019, but Baptiste eventually regained custody.
The department detailed multiple investigations, each time saying allegations could not be substantiated. The last call came in May alleging that Woods was abusing the children, but the family moved “and the department did not have updated contact information.”
Meanwhile, court documents tell a dramatic story. In them, prosecutors say that Rebekah and her 8 and 6 year old brothers were forced to undergo grueling exercise routines in their apartment and that school officials who saw signs of the abuse repeatedly reported it, Law&Crime reported.
“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.’”
All three children appeared at school with “marks, scratches, or bruises,” but they often changed their stories about how they got the injuries “to protect the parents.”
“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 said.
The children further said they were forced to do “laps and planks” as punishment and were often denied food, saying the occurrences took place multiple times between November 2023 and May 2025.
The May complaint, which was still open at the time of the girl’s death, concerned the two younger brothers. The most recent report regarding Rebekah came in January. It alleged that Baptiste would force her to run as punishment “while not allowing her bathroom or water breaks.” But again, DCS could not find “evidence to support the allegation.”
