A 12-year-old girl who managed to survive being brutally beaten and tortured by her stepfather inside her Bronx apartment is still wrestling with the horrific fallout. She appears to have regressed in age, needs cosmetic surgery and is facing severe emotional trauma, the girl’s mother told the Daily News in an exclusive interview.
But for all the challenges facing her, Divine Nieves has made a remarkable recovery from the nightmarish attack that nearly ended her life, her mother said.
“She’s so strong,” said 31-year-old Karizma Dabney. “A lot of women wouldn’t survive that. There are so many stories where a mother and her child didn’t make it out of the house, because the man killed the mom and the child.
Dabney posted a TikTok video of the girl dancing alongside her mother to the song “Still Alive” under the caption “Tried to murder me and my baby.”
“I’m just so proud of her,” Dabney said.
Joshua Burnside, 29, gouged out his stepdaughter’s right eye with a spoon and pierced her lungs with a knife before driving a 6-inch-long needle through her nose and into her brain during the explosive fit of violence at his family’s E. 173rd St. apartment near West Farms Road in Crotona Park East on Oct. 22, police and Dabney said.
Burnside, who was estranged from his wife, was arraigned on an indictment before Bronx Supreme Court Justice Alvin Yearwood Wednesday for attempted aggravated murder, attempted murder, assault, attempted assault, endangering the welfare of a child and criminal possession of a weapon. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Burnside inflicted the horrific torture on his stepdaughter after stabbing Dabney, his wife, in the torso, slashing her face and breaking her jaw, before locking her out of her sixth-floor apartment, she said. The explosion of violence, she said, was sparked by her refusal to let Burnside return to the home.
“I was banging on everyone’s doors,” said Dabney. “Only one person answered on the first floor and called the police. For me to be on the sixth floor, it must have been some time before I got to the first.
While Dabney was was shut out, Burnside stabbed his stepdaughter with two knives, a fork, a crochet needle, a spoon, tongs and a plate, all while telling the girl her mother was to blame for the savage attack, Dabney said.
“My daughter told me, he said, ‘The reason this is happening to you is because your mother doesn’t love me,’” Dabney told The News.
Burnside’s children with Dabney, a 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, witnessed the attack on Divine, their mother said.
When police arrived, they found the words “I’m sorry” scrawled in Divine’s blood on walls in the apartment’s bath and living rooms, Dabney said.
Medics rushed Divine to Jacobi Hospital in critical condition, where she complained of headaches while drifting in and out of consciousness, Dabney said.
Joshua Burnside, 29, gouged out his stepdaughter’s right eye with a spoon and pierced her lungs with a knife before driving a 6-inch-long needle through her nose and into her brain during the explosive fit of violence at his family’s E. 173rd St. apartment near West Farms Road in Crotona Park East on Oct. 22, police and Dabney said.
“[My daughter] remembers being in an extreme amount of pain and not being able to breath, her lungs were punctured, and she was telling the doctors her head hurt,” the girl’s mother said. “Nobody knew there was a nail there.”
Due to dangers associated with the procedure to remove the needle, doctors had to wait until Divine’s mother, whose wounds also required surgery, was conscious to approve the operation, she said.
Divine was transferred to Cohen Children’s Hospital in New Hyde Park, where surgeons successfully removed the object from her head, but damage to the girl’s brain changed the way she acts, her mother said.
“[Divine is] set back about a year or two behind, not with school work, just personality,” said Dabney. “She’s very child like. She’s 12, but she acts like a 9 or 10 year old.”
Divine can miraculously still see out of her damaged right eye, but the attack left her disfigured. Dabney said the family is having a hard time getting Medicaid to pay for the cosmetic surgery she needs to correct the damaged eye. She’s created a GoFundMe to help pay for medical expenses. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not respond to a request for comment.
While Dabney’s eldest bares the obvious physical scars of the attack, her entire family is now struggling to heal from the emotional trauma they’ve endured.
“My youngest, she wakes up every night, screaming ‘Don’t hurt me.’ My oldest daughter, she’s not sleeping at all,” said Dabney. “Every time I walk out of the bathroom, she jumps out of the chair like a stranger walked into the house. Everyone’s on high alert.”
Dabney’s son in particular is disturbed by the attack, his mother said.
“He had a nose bleed… and he just rubbed blood everywhere on the wall,” said Dabney. “He’s just fascinated with the pain of others. He’s going the therapy now. We’re all going to therapy.”
Dabney and Brunside had been separated for around two years when, while visiting his family’s apartment on Oct. 22, Burnside proposed moving back in.
When she rejected the idea, she said, he attacked.
“He wanted to be closer to me. He wanted to control me. He realized he couldn’t. I denied him from moving in,” said Dabney. “Then he attacked me.”
Burnside is being held without bail. He is due back in court on Feb. 23.
