The sicko mom who allegedly kept her twin 14-year-old sons imprisoned in a Bronx house of horrors for nearly a decade wanted her kids to stay babies forever — and even kept them in diapers, feeding them with bottles, sources revealed.
Lissette Soto Domenech, 64, hid her sons away from prying eyes in her Riverdale co-op building for years, inspiring hushed whispers among fellow residents who brought their concerns to the city’s Administration for Children’s Services multiple times, neighbors said.
ACS officials unsuccessful tried to enter the apartment several times, until Domenech finally opened the door on Oct. 15 – revealing an appallingly skinny teen who appeared to be 8 years old, law-enforcement sources said.
A neighbor on the Mosholu Avenue building’s sixth-floor — where Domenech allegedly held her boys captive for nine years — said the chilling discovery should have happened long ago, as she said she contacted ACS a decade ago about the kids with no result.
“It shouldn’t take this long to do something,” the neighbor said. “They should have done the follow-ups. Somebody wasn’t doing their job.”
A Bronx mom allegedly kept her twin 14-year-old boys captive in a sick bid to keep them like babies. Christopher Sadowski
The belated revelation last October led to the two boys to be whisked away to Montefiore Children’s Hospital, where they remained in treatment for three months, prosecutors said. The boys weighed just 51 and 54 pounds — far below the median healthy weight for a 14-year-old of about 115 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Domenech was arraigned Wednesday on a 13-count indictment charging her with child endangerment, assault and filing false information with New York City public schools.
She pleaded not guilty and is free on $25,000 cash bail awaiting trial, as her dumbstruck neighbors grapple with the alleged horrors that took place behind closed doors in their quiet building.
One neighbor recalled that Domenech desperately wanted a baby before her twins were born when she was 50 — and would burst into tears when asked if she had a family.
“I believe she didn’t want them to grow up,” the neighbor said. “She wanted them to be babies forever. She wanted babies and that was it. She wanted them to stay babies forever and never lose them.”
Law-enforcement sources confirmed the neighbor’s suspicion, revealing investigators believe Domenech sequestered her twin boys from the world at an early age as she embarked on a sick quest to keep them in eternal youth.
The boys were kept in diapers, fed with bottles and hadn’t been to doctors in years, sources said. One boy is autistic, but never received care, prosecutors alleged.
Prosecutors said the apartment only had infant cereal, baby bottles and toddler toys, with no food or belonging appropriate for teens.
Neighbors knew children lived in a sixth-floor apartment, but few actually saw them. Christopher Sadowski
James, 60, a doorman who has lived in the building since 2002, said he used to see the kids when they were toddlers, perhaps a year or two old.
“They had long blonde hair. They looked healthy. I have not seen them since,” he said.
Domenech and the kids slowly disappeared from view in the building. Many neighbors said they knew children lived in the sixth-floor apartment, but few had actually seen them.
Meanwhile, Domenech’s husband — whose name reputedly was Yosef Green — could often be seen hauling bags of food up to the apartment.
“Once I asked him, ‘I haven’t seen your kids in a while. Are they still here?’ He said, ‘Yes, I homeschool them,” James said. “I said, ‘They never go out?’ and he said, ‘No.’”
Domenech had started filing documents with the city’s Department of Education in 2017 falsely claiming she was homeschooling the kids, prosecutors allege.
Neighbors described Green as a sweet man who hailed from Israel and sometimes spent hours in the building’s lobby talking in Hebrew on the phone. Some said he recently died from cancer after a slow decline.
The sixth-floor neighbor contended that Domenech was physically abusive toward Green, whom she had kicked out of the apartment.
“She wouldn’t let him in. He yelled, ‘Oh baby,’ and he was crying and she was hitting him in the hallway,” the neighbor said.
“At some point, he wasn’t seeing the children because she wouldn’t let him in. She would not let him go in there apartment at all. When he brought the food, he knocked on her door and he handed it to her and that was it.”
After sleeping in a car and the building’s lobby, Green eventually got another apartment on the sixth floor, neighbors said. He often asked other neighbors for money and took to hauling cans to a nearby Key Food for cash, several said.
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Domenech had filed for bankruptcy in 2025, court records show.
How many complaints ACS received about the family or visits child welfare officials tried to make to the apartment is unclear. It was also not clear why she was not charged until January.
The sixth-floor neighbor said she once saw an ACS official outside Domenech’s door, but the mother wouldn’t let them inside.
ACS officials said they’re prohibited by state law from sharing case information, including whether someone has a current or past history with the agency.
“Our top priority is the safety and well-being of New York City’s children,” an ACS spokesperson said in a statement. “While State law prohibits ACS from sharing case information, we are grateful to our child protective teams for the life-saving work they do every day.”
Several anonymous tips eventually led to the fateful encounter at Domenech’s apartment that finally revealed the alleged abuse unfolding for nine harrowing years behind closed doors, prosecutors said.
“They took them away a couple of months ago because they looked like something out of a scary movie,” a first-floor resident said.
Additional reporting by Amanda Woods