Vegas woman sees justice after years of horrific abuse by brother

Thick scars cover her hands.

There are countless others across her body, hidden under the dark pantsuit the 27-year-old wore to a Las Vegas court Thursday, that remind Sophia Parker of the torture she endured at the hands of her older brother.

She worked as a prostitute so they could eat and have a place to live.

She thought she loved him.

They had a child together.

On Thursday, as she prepared to testify against Edmund Bobby Ho, 30, in his trial on dozens of charges, he pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree kidnapping. He faces the possibility of 10 years to life in prison at a sentencing next week.

LIFETIME OF ABUSE

Growing up in Hawaii, Sophia Parker was abused by her adoptive parents, she said. Ever since the age of 7 she wanted to find her biological family.

She found her half-brother, whom she calls Bobby, in a Nevada prison, where he was serving time on a drug charge. They share the same mother but have different fathers.

They exchanged letters for two years.

“I was just being supportive, trying to get to know him,” she told the Review-Journal, “and let him know that he had somebody who cared.”

The Review-Journal typically doesn’t name victims of sexual abuse, but Parker said she wanted to be identified for this article.

In early 2009, as Ho was about to be freed, she moved to Las Vegas. The siblings became romantically involved.

“He was the hottest guy I ever met,” she said. “And he had a completely different demeanor than any guy I knew. He was just like a bad boy. I was vulnerable because I was here by myself. I just wanted that bond so bad.”

She often told him she didn’t feel comfortable about their relationship, and said she doesn’t know whether she thought it was wrong at the time.

“I didn’t know of the word incest till after we were already pregnant,” she said. “I guess I didn’t care.”

The abuse began when she was six months pregnant.

They were back in Hawaii, looking for work and trying to catch a bus. He was drunk.

He turned and backhanded her across the face.

“I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to continue to be with him or not or find somebody else,” she said. “I should have focused more on my daughter. I was kind of at a loss because I was already showing pregnant, and I didn’t have too much support. He wasn’t supportive, but I chose to try to have a family because I thought that it would get better or it would work. At some point maybe the baby would level him out, or mature him, or make him grow up, be responsible.”

But the abuse only worsened. He would punch her stomach and tell her she was not worthy of having his child.

She gave their daughter up for adoption and they moved to Arizona.

NUMB TO PAIN

In 2011 they returned to Las Vegas, where she started selling her body so they could eat and have a roof over their heads. Ho introduced Parker to meth, which she said helped numb the pain of his fists.

A year later, he was arrested for whipping her with a belt and strangling her. Ho would eventually plead guilty in that case.

But they got back together.

In an opening statement at trial Thursday, prosecutor Robert Stephens described a series of attacks Parker endured last year as the couple bounced between weekly apartments and an abandoned building.

Ho would slide the windows closed.

“It was kind of like the sign that it was about to happen,” she said.

He would whip her with an electrical cord from a karaoke machine, or a cell phone charger, or a cable cord, or a rock inside a sock. He would punch her and choke her until she nearly passed out.

He told her that if anyone knocked on the door he would kill her.

“I couldn’t let myself pass out because I don’t know if he would have really left me there,” she said at a preliminary hearing earlier this year. “I don’t believe this s—-. I loved you so much. I loved you so much. I just wanted my family, our family together.”

He tied up her hands with clothing or rope so she couldn’t block the attack.

She tried to tell him to stop, that she didn’t want to die.

She didn’t know exactly what triggered his anger, but she said she had to make up lies to make the torture stop.

At Emerald Suites across from The Orleans, he used a knife to cut off her hair and slice her hand.

“I didn’t want him to see how bad it was,” she said. “I didn’t want him to know because I thought it would make him do more.”

‘I’M GOING TO DIE’

She saw so much blood she thought she would die.

“I was just telling myself ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die,’” she said. “But what does it matter anyway? That’s how I felt at the time because all I had was him. Like I said, I’m invisible.

“It’s really not that bad … to face death. It’s kind of peaceful. It’s more peaceful than reality.”

By then, she was numb to the pain, she said, and didn’t even react to the torture.

In December, while they were staying at Motel 8 on the south Strip, Ho suspected his sister was working for another pimp and having sex with other men behind his back.

When she couldn’t open an app on her phone quickly enough to prove that she was only working for him, he ripped up the bed sheets and used them to bind her hands and feet.

For days, he strangled and whipped her with an electrical cord from her hair straightener “over and over and over and over and over and over again and again and again and again and again,” Stephens said.

Ho blindfolded her and punched and kicked her from head-to-toe, breaking her ribs, nose and an eye socket.

Her lung collapsed. She suffered acute kidney damage after he refused to give her food or water. And when they ran out of money to pay for the motel and were leaving, he kept walking when she collapsed in the parking lot, minutes from death.

“We’ll always be related by blood,” she said. “We’ll always have a daughter together, but I don’t know him. I was holding onto what I thought was love with him for five years, and he really did leave me to die. He didn’t care.”

She was rushed to the hospital and placed in a coma by doctors who didn’t expect her to survive. She suffered in pain for two weeks before she could tell police her story.

Then she told prosecutors, and met an advocate from Safe Nest, a shelter for domestic violence victims.

She said she feels grateful to them all.

“I never had so many people care about me at one time,” she said.

“I have to have some kind of purpose,” she said. “But it’s not for me. I didn’t survive for me. (I survived) for all the ones who didn’t, who were too scared to stand up, who think it’s going to get better so they go back. Because there are a lot.”

Contact reporter David Ferrara at dferrara@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-1039. Find him on Twitter: @randompoker