A 38-year-old Deerfield Beach woman is facing a charge of aggravated child abuse about 15 years after the fact, according to Broward court records.
Raquel Knowles appeared in court Friday. Broward Judge John Hurley set bond at $25,000 and ordered her to surrender her passport.
Knowles is accused of beating her 3-year-old daughter in 1997, then fleeing the country, according to the police report read in court by Hurley.
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"[The] child was taken into emergency surgery back in 1997 for internal injuries," Hurley said. "They said you were blaming the injuries on the live-in boyfriend you had at the time."
The girl had bruises to her chest, back, buttocks, upper legs, arms and earlobes, the report stated.
"The child had great bodily harm," Hurley said. "[She had] permanent disfigurement due to surgical scarring when they had to sew up your daughter from the internal injuries after they did surgery."
When Knowles learned that detectives were on their way to the hospital, she disappeared.
"You made statements to relatives [that] you'd messed up [and] it was your last chance to keep one of your children [and you] fled the hospital out the rear when you heard police were en route," Hurley read from the report.
Her daughter told police, "Mama whooped me, mama hurt me, I wouldn't stop crying, mama did it," according to the report read in court.
The report also quoted Knowles as saying she "hit [her] daughter too hard."
While the child was in surgery, the police report quoted Knowles as telling relatives to take care of her daughter because she was leaving town.
Knowles claimed she went to live in Jamaica in 1999 and didn't return to South Florida until 2009. She told the judge she had been living in Deerfield Beach and worked as a home health aide.
Hurley ruled Knowles was "transient" and "a flight risk."
"You lived in Jamaica, then you lived here, it's kind of hard to nail down how long you've been living here locally," he said. "One thing for certain is that when you thought you were in trouble you took off and you were willing to leave your daughter to save yourself."
As a condition of Knowles' release on bond, she was ordered to have no contact with her now-grown daughter and to stay at least 500 feet away from her. Knowles will be allowed to go to work, but she must stay away from airports and seaports and she cannot venture outside Broward, Palm Beach or Miami-Dade counties, the judge ruled.
Knowles told the judge her children would post her bond, but she still was behind bars late Friday
