City of St. Cloud honors her memory with Lakefront Park bench
While the case of Stephan Sterns, the man accused of sexually abusing and killing Madeline Soto slowly works its way through the court system, advocates for the Kissimmee teen who tragically died 14 months ago are still working to assure her legacy remains alive.
Friday, Soto’s advocates, St. Cloud leaders and community members gathered at St. Cloud’s Lakefront Park to unveil a bench that serves as a permanent memorial to the 13-year-old.
Soto was reported missing on Feb. 26, 2024 by her mother, Jennifer Soto, after the girl did not come out of school that day; Sterns said he dropped her off at a church near Hunter’s Creek Middle School that morning. After a week-long search, Madeline’s body was discovered along Hickory Tree Road on March 1. Sterns is now charged with her death, along with some 60 sexual abuse charges.
But that is not the legacy Jenny Esquivel, an advocate for victims like Madeline Soto, wants to leave. After months of work and fundraising, the bench at Lakefront Park, at a peaceful spot underneath a street lamp and overlooking East Lake Tohopekaliga, was unveiled Friday. It’s just steps from the fishing pier and the place where the community gathered to honor her memory in February to mark the one-year anniversary of her tragic death. The plaque on the bench honors “Maddie” as a “Beacon of Hope”, noting that she is “Forever Loved, Forever 13”.
“Maddie will forever remind us of what we must do, like the angels she carries now under her wings,” Esquivel said at Friday’s unveiling. “Safety and actions will take us far. If one child like Maddie can unite us, think what more can be accomplished (in keeping our children safe) to those and still alive out there. We need to do what’s right by our future leaders.”
The marker was obtained and placed through the City of St. Cloud’s Bench Tribute Program, a Parks and Recreation initiative, and Madeline’s supporters raised the funds for its through donations over the course of months.
“This is an amazing tribute to (Madeline),” St. Cloud Mayor Chris Robertson said. “We’ve got some amazing folks who continue to step up here, and we are very thankful for them. Maddie was recovered in St. Cloud, so that makes this place special. We have to protect the children of our community. These ladies took this and ran with it, and they’ve been easy to support.”
It is the start of permanent memorial pieces to assure Soto is not forgotten, supporters say. Nancy Roska remains in possession of hundreds of stuffed animals and about a thousand notes that made up a roadside memorial along Hickory Tree Road that the landowner asked to be removed.
“Those are the most impactful on us,” Roska said of the notes.
Supporters like Esquivel and Roska said the next step in protecting children like Madeline comes in state legislation, and a bill designed to protect vulnerable children like her, holding those who are aware of abuse but do not report it accountable.
“We’ve identified some gaps in existing statutes and approached legislators who were happy to work with us,” Esquivel said. She said the bill being worked on, which she hopes gathers more traction in the 2026 legislative session, would identify the actions, “by admission or omission,” of caretakers in relation to those experiencing long-term abuse. The bill, she hopes, would put mandatory protocols in place for reporting abuse.
“Why did parents not notice years of abuse the children suffer?” asked Esquivel, who would not name the legislators she and others are working with, because they want to protect the work being done.
“We want to build from a bench to a bill,” she said.
