A couple in Florida, USA, were arrested after it was discovered that they kept three teenagers locked up for months and barely fed them, in a case that St. Lucie County authorities have described as “horrible,” local media reported Wednesday. . .
Óscar Torres, 40, and his wife Brittany Kirschenhofer, 32, are being held for locking three teenagers, one 17-year-old and the other twins 16, in the room they shared for several hours a day. .
“The three teenage victims weighed well below the accepted norm for their age,” Brian Hester, deputy chief of the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Office, south of the city of Orlando, told a news conference Tuesday.
According to the authorities one of the rescued minors weighed only 22 pounds and suffered from hallucinations, loss of verbal communication, muscle control and other bodily functions.
“All medical evaluations confirmed that this condition was a direct result of malnutrition and that a feeding tube is needed to try to gradually return the child to the correct nutritional level for his age,” added Hester.
The officer explained that the officers discovered a padlock on the door of the room shared by the three victims, and that the couple stated that they had placed the locks in the room to hold the dogs, so that all children could pass freely. move the house. .
“The statements of one of the victims indicated that at least one of the three victims had been physically assaulted,” revealed Hester, adding that according to the report of one of the adolescents, they “had to snoop in secret for food scraps.”
According to the police, at least since December, the minors had not left their home and they followed virtual school classes.
The three adolescents are Torres’s children and were handed over to their biological mother, who, according to police, did not know what happened to her children because she was isolated from them.
Two other children aged 9 and 6 and Kirschenhofer’s biological children, who apparently were not victims of this “gruesome case of child neglect,” as Hester said, also lived in the house and have been released to relatives.
The couple, held without bail, is facing three charges of child abuse and neglect.
Authorities were notified of the case on February 10 following an anonymous notice, after which the Florida Department of Children and Families removed the children from their home on February 22.