A woman wanted for more than two years in connection with the torture of a Margate teenager turned herself in to authorities yesterday, becoming the sixth relative arrested in a case that has exposed years of alleged abuse hidden inside a family home. Denaria Graham, 24, was booked into the Broward Main Jail and ordered held without bond by a judge in Broward County.
Graham was aware police were looking for her, according to WPLG Local 10, which reported that Margate police had been searching for her for more than two years before her arrest. She now faces charges of aggravated child abuse, child neglect, and failing to report child abuse. Investigators allege she was at times tasked with watching the teenage victim and that she let the girl out of one of the closets where she was allegedly caged only so the teen could defecate — a closet police say was located in Graham's own room.
A Case Rooted in Years of Alleged Torture
The case dates back to October 2023, when the girl, then 15, reported the abuse to an online instructor, who alerted Margate police. Officers found a teenager showing multiple signs of malnutrition and starvation, per police, and doctors at Broward Health Coral Springs documented ligature scars, insect bite marks, and long-term physical trauma, according to True Crime Daily. Police affidavits showed the girl's aunt and uncle, Latricia Elizabeth Crawley and Benjamin Deztuan Lockett, had held legal custody of her since 2014, meaning the alleged abuse spanned nearly the entirety of her childhood, from age six to fifteen.
Crawley and Lockett are accused of subjecting the victim to years of torture, including beatings, according to the same account. The teen was allegedly bound with rope, forced to kneel on rice, and made to urinate and defecate in a bucket. Investigators allege Crawley pepper-sprayed the girl's face, rubbed a mixture of Epsom salt and conditioner in her eyes, inserted thumbtacks through her fingernails, and used a stapler gun on her back. The girl was also allegedly subjected to boiling water thrown on her, cold water poured on her while she slept, and oil applied to her knees, and was caged in two different closets inside the home on the 200 block of Northwest 79th Terrace in Margate.
A Family Network With Ties to Child Protection
Graham is the fifth family member directly implicated in active abuse or concealment before her, joining a list that includes the victim's 23-year-old sister, Shankyria Clayton, who is accused of joining relatives in caging and starving her own sibling and of being aware of the abuse without reporting it. Clayton was ordered held on $60,000 bond after her November 2023 arrest and barred from contact with minors, according to Local 10 News.
Another relative, Treaunshae Gibbons, 32, drew particular scrutiny because of her professional background. Gibbons worked as a family support counselor for the Wilton Manors-based nonprofit Kids in Distress at the time, and the agency's CEO, Mark Dhooge, said she was fired immediately once the organization discovered her familial relationship to the household, per Local 10's reporting. Unredacted police records showed Gibbons had previously worked as a dependency case manager for two other child welfare agencies before joining Kids in Distress in November 2020. Detectives allege she used her knowledge of the child welfare system to act as a middleman, helping Crawley deal with investigators, and is accused of being aware of the abuse and failing to report it. Hoodline's earlier coverage detailed her arrest and the allegations that she coached her cousin to evade police scrutiny. Gibbons was granted an $80,000 bond in December 2023 with conditions including GPS monitoring and a prohibition on contacting any minors other than her own children.
A registered sex offender named Horace Crawley was also living with the victim's family and was arrested in November 2023, but only on two counts of failing to re-register as a sex offender. He pleaded no contest to those registry-related charges and received probation; police have never implicated him in the abuse itself.
How a Decade of Alleged Abuse Went Unreported
The presence of multiple relatives with professional child-welfare training inside a household where a child was allegedly tortured for years raises a central and unresolved tension in the case. Florida Statute § 39.201 requires anyone in the state who knows or suspects child abuse to report it to the Florida Abuse Hotline, making failure to do so a criminal offense, according to Richard Hornsby Law. That statute underpins the non-reporting and child neglect charges filed against Graham, Clayton, and Gibbons alike.
Florida's child welfare system is also built to respond quickly once a report is made. The Florida Department of Children and Families reported that the state responded in-person to nearly 92% of child maltreatment allegations within 24 hours during fiscal year 2023–24, a response time the agency says is roughly eight times faster than the national average. Yet the Margate case, as alleged, shows how a child can remain hidden from that system for years when the people around her — including relatives working inside it — allegedly stayed silent.
What Comes Next in Court
Crawley and Lockett, the girl's aunt and uncle, are scheduled for a calendar call on September 4 ahead of a tentative trial date set for September 14 in Broward County, Local 10 reported. Aggravated child abuse under Florida Statute § 827.03, which covers willful torture, malicious punishment, and unlawful caging, is a first-degree felony carrying up to 30 years in state prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 48 months, according to Flaherty Defense Firm.
Graham is believed to be part of the September 14 hearing as well, though her case arrives nearly three years after the first arrests in October 2023 and after more than two years spent evading the police who were looking for her. The other defendants' cases continue to move through Broward County courts as prosecutors work to hold the full extended family accountable for what investigators describe as a decade of hidden abuse.
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