{"id":70414,"date":"2025-12-14T16:26:26","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T16:26:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/70414\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T16:26:26","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T16:26:26","slug":"beaten-tortured-and-traumatized-12-year-old-bronx-girl-makes-heroic-recovery-mom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/70414\/","title":{"rendered":"Beaten, tortured and traumatized, 12-year-old Bronx girl makes heroic recovery: Mom"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 12-year-old girl who managed to survive being brutally beaten and tortured by her stepfather <\/a>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\u2019s mother told the Daily News in an exclusive interview.<\/p>\n

But for all the challenges facing her, Divine Nieves<\/a> has made a remarkable recovery from the nightmarish attack that nearly ended her life, her mother said.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe\u2019s so strong,\u201d said 31-year-old Karizma Dabney. \u201cA lot of women wouldn\u2019t survive that. There are so many stories where a mother and her child didn\u2019t make it out of the house, because the man killed the mom and the child.<\/p>\n

Dabney posted a TikTok video of the girl dancing alongside her mother to the song \u201cStill Alive\u201d under the caption \u201cTried to murder me and my baby.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just so proud of her,\u201d Dabney said.<\/p>\n

\"DivineDivine Nieves is seen in the hospital after the attack. (GoFundMe.com)<\/p>\n

Joshua Burnside, 29, gouged out his stepdaughter\u2019s 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\u2019s E. 173rd St. apartment near West Farms Road in Crotona Park East on Oct. 22, police and Dabney said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Burnside inflicted the horrific torture on his stepdaughter after stabbing Dabney<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was banging on everyone\u2019s doors,\u201d said Dabney. \u201cOnly 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy daughter told me, he said, \u2018The reason this is happening to you is because your mother doesn\u2019t love me,’\u201d Dabney told The News.<\/p>\n

Burnside\u2019s children with Dabney, a 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter, witnessed the attack on Divine, their mother said.<\/p>\n

When police arrived, they found the words \u201cI\u2019m sorry\u201d scrawled in Divine\u2019s blood on walls in the apartment\u2019s bath and living rooms, Dabney said.<\/p>\n

Medics rushed Divine to Jacobi Hospital<\/a> in critical condition, where she complained of headaches while drifting in and out of consciousness, Dabney said.<\/p>\n

\"Joshua<\/p>\n

Google<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201c[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,\u201d the girl\u2019s mother said. \u201cNobody knew there was a nail there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Due to dangers associated with the procedure to remove the needle, doctors had to wait until Divine\u2019s mother, whose wounds also required surgery, was conscious to approve the operation, she said.<\/p>\n

Divine was transferred to Cohen Children\u2019s Hospital in New Hyde Park<\/a>, where surgeons successfully removed the object from her head, but damage to the girl\u2019s brain changed the way she acts, her mother said.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Divine is] set back about a year or two behind, not with school work, just personality,\u201d said Dabney. \u201cShe\u2019s very child like. She\u2019s 12, but she acts like a 9 or 10 year old.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s created a GoFundMe to help pay for medical expenses<\/a>. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

While Dabney\u2019s eldest bares the obvious physical scars of the attack, her entire family is now struggling to heal from the emotional trauma they\u2019ve endured.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy youngest, she wakes up every night, screaming \u2018Don\u2019t hurt me.\u2019 My oldest daughter, she\u2019s not sleeping at all,\u201d said Dabney. \u201cEvery time I walk out of the bathroom, she jumps out of the chair like a stranger walked into the house. Everyone\u2019s on high alert.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"KarizmaKarizma Dabney with her daughter, Divine Nieves, are pictured in a TikTok video the pair made after the attack. (TikTok)<\/p>\n

Dabney\u2019s son in particular is disturbed by the attack, his mother said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe had a nose bleed\u2026 and he just rubbed blood everywhere on the wall,\u201d said Dabney. \u201cHe\u2019s just fascinated with the pain of others. He\u2019s going the therapy now. We\u2019re all going to therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dabney and Brunside had been separated for around two years when, while visiting his family\u2019s apartment on Oct. 22, Burnside proposed moving back in.<\/p>\n

When she rejected the idea, she said, he attacked.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe wanted to be closer to me. He wanted to control me. He realized he couldn\u2019t. I denied him from moving in,\u201d said Dabney. \u201cThen he attacked me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Burnside is being held without bail. He is due back in court on Feb. 23.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 12-year-old girl who managed to survive being brutally beaten and tortured by her stepfather inside her Bronx…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70415,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,265,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-70414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-sub-county-region","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70414\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}