A Texas mother has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for confining her 7-year-old daughter in a dark closet, where the child was fed only a corn dog and given half a cup of water each day. The confinement, according to the mother, was due to the child’s behavior and bladder issues.

Virginia Gonzales, 33, from Del Valle, received her sentence this week after pleading guilty to felony child injury. This follows the discovery of her daughter in a severely malnourished state by the child’s grandmother at Gonzales’ Austin home.

The Travis County District Attorney’s Office expressed hope that Gonzales’ acceptance of her guilt and the prison sentence marks the beginning of the child’s recovery journey. “No child should ever have to endure such conditions,” they stated to local NBC affiliate KXAN.

This plea agreement was reached after Gonzales’ attorney, Gabe Hernandez, declined an earlier offer that proposed a 40-year sentence. Hernandez described the initial offer as “utterly absurd” in a conversation with KXAN last November.

The case was initially set to go to trial next week. Gonzales faced charges of inflicting serious bodily injury after her daughter was found weighing only 29 pounds. Authorities have also noted that Gonzales has another child who has been missing since 2017.

Gonzales — who police say has another kid that’s been missing since 2017 — was scheduled to go on trial next week. She was originally charged with causing serious bodily injury to a child after her daughter was found soiled and severely malnourished following several weeks inside the closet. The girl, who weighed just 29 pounds, was reportedly found by her grandmother at the mother’s residence in Austin.

Gonzales was accused of ordering the girl’s six siblings to keep her locked inside the small space, which is approximately 3 feet by 1 foot, 10 inches, police said. The children range in age from 2 to 14; they allegedly told their grandmother that the girl was being punished by Gonzales for “getting into stuff” and eating things she was “not supposed to,” according to police.

The victim’s brother, who is 10, said the girl was only allowed to eat “one corn dog a day and half a cup of water a day,” according to Gonzales’ arrest affidavit. She allegedly defecated and urinated inside the closet. Austin Police Department Child Abuse Unit detective Ryan Constable described her condition in court.

“The fat in her cheeks was nonexistent,” he said. “Her body had used those stores to sustain itself.”

During a July 2025 court hearing, Gonzales alleged that she wanted to “fight” for her kids and prove that she deserved to have them in her life, according to KXAN. She claimed she “never spanked them” and did “nothing” to harm them physically.

“I’m ready to do whatever I need to keep my children,” Gonzales said.

“I know what I’ve done was wrong,” she told the court, while appearing to hurl the blame at her other kids for the alleged mistreatment.

“I instructed them not to let her out of the [bed]room but not the closet,” she said, per KXAN. “We’d catch her in the restroom doing something bad. It was easier for [my sons] to watch her that way.”

Austin cops have placed the children in protective custody as they continue to look for Gonzales’ missing child, Ava Marie Gonzales, who disappeared in 2017 when she was 9 years old.

The DA’s office told KXAN that it will “continue to work with APD to seek justice for the missing baby.”