Little by little, Victor Barahona revealed horrible and heartbreaking details of the abuse he and his twin sister Nubia endured.
His confidant was Katia Garcia, a foster mother who cared for him after Nubia's murder.
Victor’s words came to light in Garcia's audio-taped deposition released Monday as evidence in the child abuse and murder case against the twins' adoptive parents, Carmen and Jorge Barahona.
"He says that while they were in the bathtub, his dad would pour cold icewater on top of him and his sister," Garcia told detectives.
The bathtub where the twins were allegedly made to stay tied up for days is also in evidence.
Garcia noted Victor's posture showed the effects.
"He would walk like hunchback because of the position that he had to remain in for so long," she said.
Garcia said Victor would speak with a stutter, and become emotional when discussing his sister. Jorge Barahona is accused of beating her to death in a bedroom before putting her plastic wrapped body in the back of his pickup truck, with Victor in the front seat, then driving to Palm Beach County. That's where they all were found last Feb. 14, doused in chemicals at the side of Interstate 95.
Victor was sent to live with Garcia weeks later, after he was discharged from the hospital. Her statement was recorded last June.
"He missed her and that he thinks about her," Garcia said about Victor's account of his twin, Nubia. "He cried a couple times on his birthday."
Garcia's account makes clear Victor remembered his own abuse and was privy to the abuse of his sister.
"His father used to pour hot sauce in his ears, eyes, nose and mouth. His dad, his father, made him eat a cockroach," said Garcia.
"His father used to place his sister’s feet, submerge his sister’s feet, in Clorox and Pinesol,” said Garcia.
In a search of the home, detectives found empty Pinesol bottles in the back yard.
"His father used to put a bag over his head and that he used to choke him, and he says that there were a couple of times that he was very close to dying," said Garcia.
“He saw some of my eyelashes and then he said that his was shut with Crazy Glue, and lost all of his lashes when he opened his eyes,” she said.
A Miami-Dade judge has given custody of Victor to an aunt and uncle in Texas.
Jorge and Carmen Barahona are jailed awaiting trial, and face the death penalty if convicted.