Parents Who Gave Newborn Permanent Brain Damage Convicted In OC, DA Says

NEWPORT BEACH, CA — A mother and father were convicted of felony child abuse and endangerment toward their newborn son, which resulted in severe brain damage that left the child a quadriplegic, the Orange County District Attorney's Office said Wednesday.

Lindsay, CA residents John Andres Gonzalez, 38, and Jacqueline Navarro, 45, were each convicted of one felony county of child abuse and endangerment and one felony enhancement of causing great bodily injury to a child under the age of 5 years old.

They each face a maximum sentence of 12 years in state prison. They are scheduled to be sentenced on July 25 at the Central Justice Center in Santa Ana in Department C39. Gonzalez and Navarro are being held without bail.

According to OCDA Todd Spitzer, the parents are followers of naturopathy, which is the belief that the body can heal itself. Within weeks of their son's birth, the couple began putting the infant in high-temperature saunas and ice baths and refused to feed the baby formula or breast milk because they believed it was toxic.

The abuse left their son with severe brain damage, Spitzer said. To this day, the child — now 5-years-old — cannot walk, talk or see.

Record of the abuse dates back to Oct. 2019, when Patricia Sanchez, the child's paternal grandmother, began contacting the Tulare County Department of Child Welfare Services regarding her one-month-old grandson's welfare.

Over the course of several months, Sanchez called about the child's health 14 more times.

Tulare County was later ordered to pay $32 million to settle a lawsuit over its failure by its Department of Child Welfare Services to protect the baby from the abuse.

Sanchez was awarded full custody of the child, Spitzer said, after the couple brought the child — limp and unresponsive — into a Hoag Hospital emergency room on Aug. 1, 2020.

The baby was gray in color, emaciated and catatonic. Emergency room doctors found the child to be suffering from low blood sugar levels, hypoxia and constant seizures.

Investigators found that Gonzalez and Navarro are vegan mucus-free fruitarians and would only feed the baby soy-based baby formula, fruits and vegetables, Spitzer said.

While their infant was hospitalized through the month of August, Spitzer said Gonzalez objected to many life-saving treatments and told medical staff he believed starvation would lead to healing.

"This innocent child suffered from almost the first breath he took because of his parents' beliefs that starvation would cure him," Spitzer said. "Instead of curing him, they robbed him of his sight, his ability to take his first steps, to say his first words, and his chance to see the world through the eyes of a child who is seeing everything for the first time."