A young woman savagely beaten, raped and left to die while on Spring Break last year grew furious when she later learned the identity of her alleged attacker – a Haitian man with a violent history who was in the country illegally.
The suspect, who was deported while awaiting trial, was a stranger when the attack occurred in Miami last April.
The 25-year-old victim’s jaw was fractured and teeth knocked out in the alleged attack. She was also said to be unable to speak, and when nurse handed her a sheet of paper, on which she struggled to write a single word – ‘beaten’.
Now, 18 months later, after undergoing numerous operations, the victim, a fitness instructor from Kentucky who identifies herself as Jenny, has decided to finally speak out.
‘Looking back on that day I remember laying on the floor of that house he dragged me into and thinking I had already died,’ she told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview.
‘I was beaten so bad, over and over again, and I did not understand why. I didn’t know this man.’
She would only learn the suspect’s identity nine months later after a DNA match led to the arrest of a man who was already well known to law enforcement.
Junior Joseph, 28, had entered the US on a visa that had long since elapsed, records show. He remained here even after records show him being arrested for crimes including domestic violence, battery, burglary, drugs and resisting arrest.
Jenny was left with a fractured jaw and broken teeth after being abducted, beaten and violently raped while on spring break in Miami last year
Her alleged assailant was Junior Joseph, 28, who entered the US on a visa and stayed long after it expired. He was deported to Mexico a few months before the trial was due to start
Joseph’s rap sheet showed that he had previously been arrested for crimes including domestic violence, battery, burglary, drugs and resisting arrest
‘It’s hard to believe there was someone like that on the streets and allowed to repeatedly commit crimes,’ she told the Daily Mail. ‘He was in and out of the court system and he kept doing bad things. It ended with me almost losing my life.’
She’s now hoping to use her story to spread word of what she sees as a national disgrace – the country’s broken immigration system.
She spoke with the Daily Mail on the heels of giving a videotaped interview to The American Border Story (TABS), a conservative group devoted to exposing the human impact of the nation’s illegal immigration crisis.
She joins a chorus of victims and victim families who have shared their own stories with the organization.
It comes after Rachel Morin, 37, was raped and murdered on a hiking trail in Bel Air, Maryland in August 2023. Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, an illegal immigrant from El Salvador with his own violent past, received a life sentence for killing the mother of five.
The President has highlighted Morin’s tragedy in his campaign for border security, as battles over his administration’s crackdown on immigration rage across the country.
Donald Trump has blamed former president Joe Biden for letting millions of illegal immigrants flood across the border during his tenure, and has ramped up enforcement and deportations, arguing his priority is ridding the country of ‘bad hombres’.
Speaking about Jenny’s case, Nicole Kiprilov, the executive director of TABS, told the Daily Mail: ‘The reason this is so impactful is because the same thing happened to this girl too but by some miracle she lived.
‘If you see the video, it’s amazing she lived and can even talk at this point. This girl lived to tell her story.’
Rachel Morin, 37, a mom of five, was raped and murdered on a hiking trail in Bel Air, Maryland in August 2023 by an illegal immigrant from El Salvador
Victor Martinez-Hernandez, 24, received a life sentence for killing Morin and has been used as an example by Donald Trump for the need to crack down on immigration
President Trump has been outspoken on his predecessor Joe Biden’s handling of immigration stating his intention to rid the country of ‘bad hombres’
The initial attack on Spring Break received little media attention. Junior Joseph’s arrest received some local coverage in Florida, as did the short-circuiting of his trial.
The identity of the victim, whose basic account of the attack was summarized in police records, remained a secret.
Jenny told the Daily Mail that she remained silent because she feared retribution. She said she’s still fearful that she’ll be targeted again. While the Daily Mail knows her real name, she asked to use an alias, not wanting anyone to track her down, whether it’s another attacker or an online troll.
The 14-minute video starts with her introducing herself, perched in a chair wearing a white tank top and with her blonde locks of hair resting on her shoulders.
‘My name is Jenny, and I am 24 years old,’ says the woman in a soft voice, her face blurred out.
She talked about being raised by a loving family, how she was studying psychology in hopes of helping people with trauma before her trip to Miami.
She goes on to share her story.
‘I was visiting the beach on Spring Break and it was my first time there,’ she said.
Jenny was on spring break in Miami, a popular destination for college students, and was left by a friend who drove off without her after an argument. She was then abducted while walking on the sidewalk
In a video created by The American Border Story (TABS), Jenny, 24, expressed her anger that her attacker had been able to exploit a broken immigration and criminal justice system
Jenny said she was beaten so badly that her entire bottom row of teeth was gone. When she saw her image in the mirror she thought, ‘No man will ever love me’
She explained how she’d gotten into an argument with her travel companion, a friend, who drove off without her.
Her voice tensed up as she described the stranger confronting her on the sidewalk.
‘He knocked me on the ground, and he beat me in the head, and that’s when my arm broke because it was protecting my eyes,’ she recalled.
‘And I kind of was going in and out of consciousness at that point, and I remember kind of being carried by him over his shoulder.
‘And I looked and my arm, the bones were sticking out. And I blacked out again. I woke up in a house and he was on top of me.’
The attack continued with the assailant beating and raping her. She closed her eyes in fear. She went into excruciating detail about how he then urinated into her broken nose and mouth.
‘I was just I was so close to dying. I don’t even know how I got out of that house,’ she said. ‘I guess I crawled out. And I went next door.’
She said a little girl saw her through her window, came out to her and called the police.
Joseph’s arrest report from December 30, 2024, revealed he was charged with sexual battery, aggravated battery and kidnapping
In June, just a couple months before the planned trial, US immigration officers removed Joseph from jail and deported him to Mexico
Jenny was rushed to the hospital, where she had to be intubated.
‘My jaw was broken,’ she said. ‘All the bones from below my eye sockets were shattered, all the plates, and the bottom portion of my maxilla where my teeth go… It was completely gone, uh, from him kicking me so hard and beating me in the head.’
She then recalled looking in a mirror for the first time, seeing her deformities, and thinking she might never heal.
‘I was devastated,’ she said. ‘I thought, ‘I’ll never have a husband.
‘There’s no man that will ever love me with the way that I look.’
She spoke of the operations to repair and reconstruct her face and limbs, and her painful ongoing recovery.
She also shared how her attacker exploited a broken immigration and criminal justice system.
In December last year Joseph was charged with rape and he could have been put away for life. But in June, just a couple months before the planned trial, US immigration officers removed him from jail and deported him to Mexico.
Jenny told the Daily Mail that the senator from her home state of Kentucky, James Comer, got in her in touch with The American Border Story after her ordeal
Authorities in Miami were said to be furious, issuing a warrant for his arrest – a seeming exercise in futility as Joseph’s whereabouts remain unknown.
‘I didn’t understand that a person who was not supposed to be walking free on our streets, who had been locked up numerous times and was not supposed to be in our country, would kidnap me and beat and rape me until my jaw was broken and my teeth were gone,’ Jenny said in the video.
She continued, ‘It’s been about a year and a few months passed when that happened, so I’ve had a lot of time for my skin to heal and my bones to heal. But the mental trauma, I’m still healing from that and every time I talk about it, it’s really hard.
‘And there’s nights where I’m terrified and I have nightmares about this person coming back to kill me and kill my family, to torture me and you know, I think it’s something that may get better with time, but I will live with this for the rest of my life.’
Jenny told the Daily Mail she was too scared to speak publicly after the attack, but that she later wrote a letter to President Trump expressing support for his administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration while also seeking assistance.
She said Senator James Comer from her home state of Kentucky got her in touch with The American Border Story.
‘Normal people cannot comprehend the level of suffering I endured at the hands of that man,’ Jenny told the Daily Mail, sobbing.
‘I do have faith in the lord because I am a Christian. God let me stay here for a reason. I have to tell this story so can stop it from happening again.’
