LAS CRUCES, N.M. – Sheriff’s deputies in Doña Ana County, N.M., have arrested the mother of a 17-year-old girl on charges of physical and sexual abuse in reaction to learning of her daughter’s sexual orientation.
Sheriff’s officials have enhanced the charges because they say the incident qualifies as a hate crime.
Magdo Haro, 40, was taken into custody Tuesday afternoon on charges of second-degree criminal sexual penetration and third-degree child abuse, reports the Las Cruces Sun-News.
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The 17-year-old girl told investigators that she and Haro had been arguing about the girl’s sexuality for about a week, according to a complaint filed in Magistrate Court.
That fight apparently erupted at the family’s East Mesa home Saturday when Haro threatened to insert the stick of a plunger and a hanger inside her daughter “so she would know what it was like to have sex with a woman,” the complaint states.
Eventually, Haro coerced her daughter to place her own fingers inside her, again, “so she would know what it was like to have sex with a woman,” the complaint states.
Haro allegedly forced the girl to undress in front of her, the girl told investigators, to “show her she was a woman, and not a man,” the complaint states.
The daughter told authorities, according to the complaint, she feared she was about to be molested.
According to statements made to investigators, the girl was told she was “not to wear boy clothes anymore, only girl clothes,” and that she would have to start attending church with her grandmother.
Haro has denied the allegations.
