MIAMI – A 46-year-old man recently violated the trust that a girl’s parents had placed in him as a family friend to sexually abuse their daughter when she was 10 in Miami’s Little Havana, according to police officers.
The brave girl, now 11 years old, described how Alexeis Sanchez Leyva used violence — such as pulling her hair and punching her over the head — to intimidate her into keeping the ongoing child sex abuse secret, according to a police report.
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Sanchez Leyva was at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on Thursday in Miami-Dade County without bond, after the girl reported it all to the Department of Children and Families and to Kriti House, a child advocacy center in Miami, records show.
Sanchez Leyva appeared in Miami-Dade court on Wednesday after police officers arrested him on Tuesday night at his home, in Miami’s West Flagler neighborhood, records show. According to the arrest form, he got so brazen that one of the incidents was when the girl was in a home with other adults and a child.
Sanchez Leyva, who told police officers he moved to Miami-Dade County from Cuba and has yet to learn how to speak English, is facing charges of lewd and lascivious molestation of a child younger than 12, and attempted battery. He has denied the accusations.