Had the trial gone to court, Truong`s lawyers would have shown jurors a two-and-a-half-hour video of the interrogation recorded by Worcester police. The video – on which the judge based her decision to reject Truong`s alleged confession – was obtained and distributed by WBUR after lengthy legal efforts. Candice says she has been heavily criticized by some community members for taking legal action. In 2011, Ed Ryan, who was appointed Truong`s lawyer after his arrest, told me that Truong`s first words were that she hadn`t. In one case, Winczuk admitted to sexually assaulting a teenager – one of four minors he had been accused of abusing – while in the second case, he was convicted of endangering the best interests of the child by sharing child pornography. * Not their real names. The names of the cities were not released to protect the identity of the underage boy. Federal agents searched Winczuk`s home, where they found the phone he was using to care for the boy, as well as a second phone hidden in an armchair. LEARN MORE| I`m a champion now: Cape Town musician Claire Phillips opens up about her abusive past The city of Worcester will pay $2.1 million to a woman accused of choking her one-year-old son following what she calls a forced and false confession. It was December 2008, and two detectives in Worcester had a Vietnamese-American teenager in the box, a confined space used for interrogations. A custody battle that took place at a Baptist church in Worcester in 2019 quickly escalated into a chaotic frenzy that led to multiple arrests, a pastor`s Taser and allegations that police beat worshippers. Court documents show prosecutors later argued that Winczuk faced a minimum sentence of 45 years between the two crimes he pleaded guilty to because of his convictions in New Jersey. The judge described Truong as “scared, gentle, emotionally compromised.” Truong continued to insist that she was innocent, just as detectives continued to insist that she was guilty.
When they arrived in Worcester, Look and Chen suffered severe liver damage. Dr. Stephanie Carreiro, a toxicology expert at UMass, found a shipment of Legalon, an experimental drug that can reverse liver damage. The drug, which does not have FDA approval, had to be flown from Philadelphia to Worcester. Then came a shocking call from Justin`s father in February 2020. He asked if Candice knew her son was in a relationship with an adult woman. She couldn`t believe what she was hearing and confronted Justin. Justin was madly in love with Sarita* (24) and fought tooth and nail with his mother when she turned to the police to end the case.
This was confirmed when the District Court in Worcester, Western Cape, found the woman guilty of legal rape and gave her a five-year suspended sentence. Winczuk`s attorney, Scott Lauer, disagreed, saying a case in California federal court suggested the man should only be jailed for 35 years. Mother and son are now trying to rebuild their relationship. Candice decided it was time for a fresh start, so they moved to a small town more than 100 miles away. Justin has transferred to the local school and Candice believes it`s better for her. Winczuk eventually asked the boy to visit him for a night in New Jersey, according to the documents, describing the sexual acts he said he would perform on the boy`s “grapes” and saying he would become “tough.” YOU asked Sarita for a comment, but she refused. She eventually made a full confession and pleaded guilty — a five-year suspended sentence on the condition she left Justin alone. Her behavior, she wrote in a memorandum of judgment, consisted of convincing young boys to send her photos of their genitals pretending to be a young girl.
To cheat on her, she said, he sent sexual photos of prepubescent girls. Noto detailed how Winczuk, a failed EMT candidate, used fake law enforcement badges to impress and feed young boys online. He also sometimes pretended to be a young girl interested in an insecure boy in order to get explicit photos. In its statement Thursday, the City of Worcester said all parties to the lawsuit were prohibited from commenting as a condition of the settlement. This time, there was no doubt in Candice`s mind: she would make accusations. Yet there is no doubt that she did the right thing in the end. “I will never stop fighting for my son. I am not ashamed and he should not be. Candice and her sister went to the police, but at first they were told it would be difficult to prove the rape. Candice insisted on seeing Sarita at the police station. In January 2018, Noto said, Winczuk treated an 11-year-old boy from Worcester on Instagram for two weeks, posing as the older brother of a fictional girl. For more information about this project, see www.projectsafechildhood.gov.
“I don`t believe you, because I believe scientists, I believe doctors,” a police detective replies. But Justin refused to cooperate and refused to make a statement to the police. Winczuk, who has been in pre-trial detention since his arrest, was sentenced to five years of probation at the end of his sentence. The day before, Truong`s 13-month-old baby had stopped breathing. Worcester 911 responded to a hysterical and pleading call. A doctor at a nearby hospital pronounced him dead. “Psychological torture is the best way to describe what they did to this young woman,” Ryan said at the time. “Their interrogation was not about establishing the truth, not about establishing the facts. Their intention was to force them to confess to doing it as they had imagined. The woman wrote that Winczuk suffered from PTSD after working as a “volunteer firefighter and emergency services worker” and won several awards for “good citizenship.” “She denied everything at first. But then I brought Justin to us, because he had told me everything up to that point. She took Justin to his grandmother`s house and also asked his father to come to a meeting.
By then, it was too late for him when the mother went to the Worcester Police Department, which was able to match the photos Winczuk had provided with images stored in New Jersey state jails. Chen and Look appeared together at a press conference at the UMass Memorial in Worcester on Thursday, grateful for the life-saving help they received from doctors. “I told him, `You were man enough to do these things behind my back, now you have to be adult enough to tell the truth.`” Court documents show that several members of Winczuk`s family wrote letters on his behalf, with his sister claiming he made his “stupid decision” after his father had just died and his mother had been diagnosed with a serious illness. The turning point in the two-hour taped interrogation comes after detectives promised Truong that if she admitted what she had done, she would be taken to a juvenile court, where the sentence would be minimal. But if she does not cooperate, they threaten, they will press to judge her as an adult. She regularly called and texted him and the case continued, with phone calls being part of the evidence against Sarita in court. According to Noto, Winczuk violated probation conditions in December 2017 by buying a smartphone he used to care for young boys online. The drug worked for Chen, but not for Look, who was in worse condition.
Doctors put her at the top of the liver transplant list in a last-ditch attempt to save her life — and it worked. Lauer said that while Winczuk`s crimes were heinous, he didn`t actually physically abuse the Worcester boy. He said the man`s punishment was unfair compared to others he had listed in a court record. In a press release issued Friday, Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael S. Rollins and Joseph R. Bonavolonta, a special agent in the FBI`s Boston office, said the charge reflected his ongoing commitment to eradicating child abuse.
