Roberto Demming is an Abusive Asshat
October 23, 2008 by Ruby
Lashonda Riggsbee and Roberto Demming
Homestead, FL – Meet Roberto Demming.  Demming, 34, had at least two girlfriends and at least two children. But he wasn’t very nice to any of them, it seems.  On October 1st, Demming and girlfriend number 1, Lashonda Riggsbee, 34, were arrested and charged with aggravated child abuse when their 10-year-old daughter was found sleeping on the floor of their locked garage.
The arrest affadavit states that officers found the girl “sitting on the ground in the fetal position in front of a vehicle . . . There was a training toilet located next to the victim that was full of urine.”  Her body was covered with scars. The garage had no air conditioning or windows.  The girl said in a later interview that “she was frequently locked away without food, drink, pillows, toys, light or any company in the garage as punishment, and that she was very scared at night alone in the garage and would ask to come inside, but was not allowed to do so.”
Are you angry yet?  Me, too. But wait, there’s so much more to this story!!
Apparently, Ms. Riggsbee was not Mr. Demming’s only girlfriend. In fact, she wasn’t the only girlfriend living in that house!  You with me??   Roberto Demming’s other girlfriend was Shirley Hill, and apparently, Mr. Demming wasn’t very nice to girlfriend number 2.  Shirley Hill is lucky enough to have a sister who had the presence of mind to call the police on September 29th to report the situation. That got the ball rolling. (Sending out a big Dreamin’ Demon salute to that woman, whose name has not been published.)
When police arrived at the home, Demming initially refused to let officers in. When he finally did, they found Ms. Hill in hysterics, badly beaten, with ankles swollen to 10-12″ in diameter.
”My child doesn’t have a childhood. He doesn’t allow us to go places,” Hill cried.
She told police that she was beaten daily with a wooden stick or belt. Demming expected her to turn up Real Estate leads for his business, and if she fell asleep or failed to find leads, he’d beat her. Other punishments included making her stand for up to 20 hours at a time, choking her, and threatening her with weapons from an arsenal that included an AK-47 machine gun.
Some boyfriend, huh?
He didn’t want her to get close to their 3-year-old daughter, for fear that she’d “turn her against him,” so he tried his best to keep them apart. In fact, he often had girlfriend number 1, Riggsbee, care for their child in order to keep Ms. Hill away from her.  Ms. Hill states that she was often not allowed to give her child adequate food, bathe her, or change her diaper.
Unfortunately, the little peanut suffers from an enzyme deficiency disorder known as maple syrup urine disease and is developmentally delayed, so she really needs regular medical care. Do you think Mr. Demming allowed that? No, sir!  In fact, when the little girl recently began losing weight and behaving “oddly,” he not only refused to allow her to see a doctor, he separated her from her mother completely.
Incidentally — and not surprisingly — this isn’t the first time Mr. Demming has treated his “loved ones” like crap. Another Miami-Dade woman, also the mother of one of his children, was granted a permanent restraining order against him in 1997.  I can hear your exclamations of shock from here, Demons, but yes, it’s true: he’s done it before.
Roberto Demming is being held without bail and his charges include kidnapping, aggravated child abuse, attempted murder, and child neglect.  Here’s hoping Ms. Hill and the children find a way back to normalcy, and that Mr. Demming and Ms Riggsbee spend many a long year in a very small cell thinking about ways they could have been nicer.
1:17 pm on October 23rd, 2008
Great writeup, Ruby!
Can we make these people sleep on the garage floor? Forever?
(edited to note: not necessarily girlfriend #2. but definitely the other two. )
1:29 pm on October 23rd, 2008
Too bad that most of the men with dead brains don’t have dead dicks to match. Truely evil ass people.
1:32 pm on October 23rd, 2008
What is with Ms Riggsbee’s eyes? One seems quite a bit larger than the other?
And I think the garage floor is probably a bit too comfortable. Maybe we need to spread some oil slicks and a couple of handfuls of assorted nails and screws across it. And take away the broom.
1:41 pm on October 23rd, 2008
Better make sure it is a cell with no cot, so they can both sleep on concrete with a training potty next to them. What a couple of mother fuckers!
2:34 pm on October 23rd, 2008
I fully understand what that child went through. For four years, I was in a similar situation. My father opened a small service station in a tiny community and made me sleep on the bare, hard concrete floor of that gas station with nothing but a sleeping bag next to an open-flame gas heater every night. Winter nights scared me so much that I learned to sleep without twitching a muscle for fear of catching the sleeping bag on fire, which was under 3 racks of oil & other petroleum products. The whole town knew about it and did nothing, in fact, I recently found out that it was a source of amusement for them. At least the child had a savior. But, she is also in for a lifetime of nightmares and back problems.
3:19 pm on October 23rd, 2008
Wolf, that is aweful… I’m so sorry that you had to live like that. Is your dad still in your life ?
3:28 pm on October 23rd, 2008
I am so sorry to hear that wolf.
I hope Bubba gets a hold of this asshat and abuses him on a daily basis. Hope he sleeps on the floor under bubba’s cot.
I just hope all the women in this asshat’s life get the help they so desperately need.
3:30 pm on October 23rd, 2008
wow im sorry about what you went through,,my mom wasnt mother of the yr but i wasnt left on concrete,i was left alone with no heat or hydro in a huge house on a cliff over water while my mom and whatever boyfriend were out drinking for days at a time,,,took me yrs as a adult to be able to be able to be alone let alone at night,,i hope these freaks pay dearly for what they did because as wolf has said its brings nightmares,,i cant watch scarey movies to this day like Scream( trees blowing all over in the wind is what petrified me the most) Stephen King movie Salems Lot(danny vampire floats up to the window over a cliff) hope they get her help where ever she is now,,
3:38 pm on October 23rd, 2008
Wolf that is so tragic… I am so sorry for you..No one deserves to be treated like that, and for no one to care to help you is despicable. I hope this little girl climbs back our of the cesspool and gets some help to get on with her life.. My thoughts and prayers are with her.
3:45 pm on October 23rd, 2008
I think I’ll stop by my dad’s house to give him a high-5 tonight. He wasn’t winning any awards, but we were always sufficiently clothed, housed, fed and educated.
On a side note, from Wiki: The disease is characterized in an infant by the presence of sweet-smelling urine, with an odor similar to that of maple syrup. Infants with this disease seem healthy at birth but if left untreated suffer severe brain damage, and eventually die.
It’s actually called “maple syrup urine disease”. Definitely descriptive. I think I’d almost prefer the clinical “branched-chain ketoaciduria”. You know, as soon as I can pronounce that last word.
4:19 pm on October 23rd, 2008
10-12″ ankles, standing 20 hours. She must of just tried to make it through for her child, but why didn’t she try to leave ever (isn’t that called something). I also can’t imagine that poor child laying on the floor at nightime, scared to death. This is not how you punish a child, you put them to bed early or not allow them to play with a toy, etc. Just some fucked up people, seriously.
Wolf so sorry that you had to endure that during childhood. Hope you are healing the best you can for what you went through and know you are in my thoughts and I’m sure a lot of others.
8:32 pm on October 23rd, 2008
I wish this poor little child could be adopted by someone like Wolf or Whisper who can understand what she’s been through and know how to help her recover and live the good life.
9:33 pm on October 23rd, 2008
thank you but i have a feeling that little girl will also grow up and carry on,,i may have been neglected as a child but you can bet it made me want to do better,i have 2 wonderful kids(mini adults) 1 in university of central oklahoma,1 university here in canada,i went through became a nurse,my husband and i have known each other since we were kids so he knew me and he knew my big thing was to be 100% the opposite of how i was raised,43 now and i can honestly say after making sure my kids had all they needed growing up and seeing them now succeeding its because i refused to be the parent i was raised by,,
10:54 pm on October 23rd, 2008
…Can’t WAIT Till This Guy Meets “DADDY”
~!!!…
11:29 pm on October 23rd, 2008
Just wow…
11:31 pm on October 23rd, 2008
I couldn’t agree more. Imagine if you had to look at this monster every day! He’s gonna get it in prison, for sure! That is our only consolation…
5:08 am on October 24th, 2008
HORRIFIC STORY:
What we need to do is take his AK 47 gun or whatever weapons of destruction he chooses to possess and shoot him and her and be done with these two MONSTERS FROM HELL, oh well just kill them both and be done with it
FOR THAT POOR LITTLE GIRL and the other girlfriend, GET THEM MAJOR HELP SOON MY heart goes out basically ONLY to the little girl who had to endure such trauma and violence and torture in her little life…. enough is enough end all of their existing life…. they do not deserve prison life, where they will get fed and sleep on cots, they deserve to die …………..we can get rid of these two scum bags once and for all
4:04 pm on October 24th, 2008
What happened to the little 10-year old that was being neglected? This story is disgusting at best. Piece of living shit….both of them are pieces of turds dried up in the sun….yeah, yeah I know now I am just ranting out of anger!
5:07 am on October 26th, 2008
@Cassiemomma. Were you thinking of Stockholm syndrome?
12:56 pm on October 26th, 2008
Wow. Ruby, you’re right–after your paragraph on the little girl in the garage, no, I wasn’t expecting more. This guy—fuck him, & I hate him. Thinks he’s some kind of god.
If so, why is it that social services didn’t think it was important to check in on him from time to time? A permanent restraingn order sounds quite serious.
I am confused about this Riggsbee bitch. Was she at all abused or what? He doesn’t seem like the kind of dude who spares anyone from abuse.
There was a pop novel—a Patricia Cornwell novel–a few yrs back that had a killer who had this disease…recognizable to his victims b/c he smelled like syrup…
BY THE WAY, do we know why officers came to the residence in the first place? Did I miss it?
1:18 pm on October 26th, 2008
Sugarglider,
There have been no indications that Ms. Riggsbee was abused, and yes, that seems very odd, doesn’t it? But they also have a pretty lengthy history, since they have a 10-year-old daughter together. It seems like Ms. Riggsbee was the alpha girlfriend. Ms. Hill is a more recent addition, and it sounds like she was treated more like a harem-girl, for want of a better analogy.
The police went to the house after Ms. Hill’s sister called them to report the conditions there, and express fear for her sister’s safety. Go, sis!!
9:40 am on October 27th, 2008
Yes I think that’s right. Where you are kidnapped and you actually start to feel sorry for your captors or you stay even when you have a chance to go.
Thanks Abroad!
6:40 pm on March 8th, 2009
That’s Horrible. I feel for the girl.
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