Prosecutors said that for the poor 8-year-old girl, Gizel,\u00a0things didn\u2019t end well. Just like\u00a0many other children, the 8-year-old child was a happy, curious and smart little girl. She loved school and enjoyed making new friends.\u00a0As with many kids her age, she kept a diary. Only, the rows in her diary weren\u2019t filled with love hearts and secret messages about boys she liked. Instead, the truth revealed in the pages of her diary is so horrible that it\u2019s difficult to read.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gizel\u00a0was reportedly found dead in her grandmother\u2019s dirty, pest-riddled apartment. Prosecutors said that the girl was\u00a0beaten and strangled to death. On her wrists there were ligature marks where she had been bound, and on her back was a wound so infected there were maggots in it, according to reports.\u00a0Just months prior to her death, the victim and two siblings had moved to live with her father Andre and grandma Helen. Andre had a serious condition that meant he required constant care and couldn\u2019t look after himself.\u00a0It was Helen who took care of the family, and from the outside it looked like any other home. The pages of the girl’s diary, however, attested otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every day Gizel was punished for behaving badly. She was forced to do squats, stand in uncomfortable positions and had a dirty sock pushed into her mouth if she did so much as make a noise. She was also physically beaten, tormented and often had to make do without food or water.\u00a0On the occasions she dried to drink water from the toilet, she was beaten head to toe.\u00a0Sometimes she was tied to her bed and not allowed to move freely for several days.\u00a0And yet, despite the hell she experienced, Gizel remained positive. In her diary, one could read that she knew she would be punished for \u2018acting up\u2019, but that she was hoping to develop into a smart and beautiful young woman.<\/span><\/p>\n

She also wrote about how she dreamt of playing with her siblings and watching TV. Often, the diary was updated a few days later, when she would describe how she had been abused again.\u00a0Sadly, by the end of Gizel\u2019s life, her diary entries had become little more than jagged scrawls. Deprived of nutrition, suffering constant abuse from her grandmother and growing weaker by the second, her decline was quick and definite. Just days before her death, she is said to have written: \u201c\u201cI hate this life because now I\u2019m in super big trouble.\u201d\u00a0When Gizel was found, her body was so degraded that jurors began to cry while hearing details of the case. The diary evidenced a hopeful young girl who loved school and skipping. It also told of the abuse that permeated her life.\u00a0Gizel\u2019s father died of a heart attack in jail while awaiting trial for his role in her death. Her grandma Helen would later be sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prosecutors said that for the poor 8-year-old girl, Gizel,\u00a0things didn\u2019t end well. Just like\u00a0many other children, the 8-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-trending","8":"cs-entry","9":"cs-video-wrap"},"yoast_head":"\n