Six girls—Jeanne Orlando (left), Amy Eddy (second from left), Desiree Kolbek (second from right), Pebbles Rodriguez, Jamie Rodriquez, and Summer Hagan—were taken as child brides and sexually abused by Tony Alamo, a fundamentalist minister and leader of the cultlike Tony Alamo Christian Ministries. Jeanne was 15, Amy was 14, Desiree was 8, and Pebbles was 12 when they were first raped by Alamo. A seventh girl, Nicole Farr (right), was 15 when she escaped from Alamo’s compound, having been told she would be his next bride.
Dozens of other children were also sexually, physically, and emotionally abused by the group, which also had branches in Indiana, California, Colorado, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. None of the children in the group received social security numbers or vaccinations. Although Alamo claimed that all the children were homeschooled, their homeschool program was not registered and Anthony Lane, the father of three other children in Alamo’s group (9-year-old Tim, 11-year-old Sarah, and 13-year-old Ashley, whom he had seen married to a 40-year-old man), stated that “They don’t do much schooling though, for someone who claims they home school their kids. I didn’t see a whole lot of kids going to school every day.”
Tony Alamo was arrested and charged with transporting minors across state lines to engage in sex. He was sentenced to 175 years in prison. Many of the parents in his group lost custodial rights to their children.
Date: September 20, 2008
Location: Fouke, Arkansas Read More
Posted: December 6, 2014 by clmccracken
2 Children of Estella Rosendo
A 15-year-old boy was punched in the face by his mother, Estella Rosendo, after defending his 11-year-old brother from her. The boys were homeschooled.
Rosendo was arrested for child abuse.
Date: May 5, 2009
Location: Port St. Lucie, Florida Read More
Posted: December 6, 2014 by clmccracken
Gregory Jean Jr.
Gregory Jean Jr., age 13, was imprisoned, starved, beaten, and forced to work as a maid for four years by his father, Gregory Jean Sr., and his stepmother Samantha Joy Davis. Davis’ biological children were also abused—she “was on probation for cutting her biological son’s tongue with a pair of hot scissors in 2004”—but they were not imprisoned or starved as Gregory was. After Gregory reported the abuse to a school counselor and investigators failed to substantiate the claim, he was withdrawn from school to be homeschooled, which consisted of copying words out of the dictionary.
Gregory first went to visit with Jean and Davis in 2010, but Jean insisted that he stay to avoid having to pay child support payments to Gregory’s biological mother, Lisa Smith. Though Gregory was initially treated well, eventually he was forced to sleep in the garage with a bucket as a toilet and forbidden from celebrating Christmas with the family. When Davis was not pleased with his schoolwork or his labor, she beat him with a stick and deprived him of food.
The abuse finally came to light when Gregory managed to contact Smith, who had reported him missing. After a long search of the house, police finally found him hidden behind a wall. Jean and Davis were each charged with false imprisonment, cruelty to children, and obstruction. Davis’ three teenaged children who lived in the home were also charged with obstruction.
Date: November 29, 2014
Location: Jonesboro, Georgia Read More
Posted: December 5, 2014 by clmccracken
7 Children of Jeffrey and Danita York
Seven children—two boys and five girls ranging in age from 3 months to 19 years—were imprisoned and physically and sexually abused for fifteen years by their father, Jeffrey York. At least one of the girls was York’s stepdaughter. The children’s mother, Danita York, was also abused. The children were homeschooled.
York forced his wife and children to dress in 18th-century-style clothing and kept them isolated from the outside world. Between September 1996 and October 1997 he raped one of the girls, who was younger than 13. One of the other girls was imprisoned in “an 8-by-10-foot bedroom for almost a year” and beaten with a hobby horse.
The abuse came to light when Danita York reported the rapes to the police in 2009. Jeffrey York was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Date: December 2009
Location: Madison Township, Ohio Read More
Posted: December 5, 2014 by clmccracken
5 Children of Jessica Banks
Five girls, ages 4 to 11, were starved, beaten, and sexually abused by their adoptive mother, Jessica Banks. The girls were removed from public school in 2004 shortly after their adoption. Banks was the pastor of the Word of Life Apostolic Church, a “satanic cult” where the girls were homeschooled.
The children began living with Banks in 2000 after they were removed from their abusive birth family. Banks made them sleep in an unheated room in her garage and wear two layers of diapers under long black dresses. The girls were beaten daily with various objects, forced to eat spoiled food and clean Banks’ house. Banks drugged them with sleeping pills and raped two of them while the others watched.
Banks was arrested after one of the girls, age 6, was found emaciated and bruised on the pavement near the church. Banks was sentenced to life in prison.
Date: June 2005
Location: Moreno Valley, California Read More
Last Updated: July 3, 2021 by clmccracken
4 Children of Sylvia and Michael Wenger
Four children—Richard Felsch (right), b. 1988; his twin sisters, b. 1987; and an unrelated boy, b. 1995—were imprisoned and physically and sexually abused by Sylvia and Michael Wenger (left), their adoptive parents. The children were homeschooled. It is unknown whether the Wengers’ biological children were also abused.
Three of the children were placed with the Wengers in 1996 after they were abused in their biological mother’s home. The fourth boy later joined them. At the Wengers’, the children were beaten with boards, “forced to stand in a corner for hours, locked into closets and force-fed for punishment.” The twin girls and the youngest boy were also repeatedly raped by Michael Wenger, who had begun dating his wife Sylvia when she was 14 and he was 21.
The abuse came to light in 2001 when one of the girls escaped and reported it to the authorities. The Wengers served 7 years in prison.
Date: 2001
Location: Chewelah, Washington Read More
Last Updated: July 3, 2021 by clmccracken
Children by Tony Alamo
Six girls—Jeanne Orlando (left), Amy Eddy (second from left), Desiree Kolbek (second from right), Pebbles Rodriguez, Jamie Rodriquez, and Summer Hagan—were taken as child brides and sexually abused by Tony Alamo, a fundamentalist minister and leader of the cultlike Tony Alamo Christian Ministries. Jeanne was 15, Amy was 14, Desiree was 8, and Pebbles was 12 when they were first raped by Alamo. A seventh girl, Nicole Farr (right), was 15 when she escaped from Alamo’s compound, having been told she would be his next bride.
Dozens of other children were also sexually, physically, and emotionally abused by the group, which also had branches in Indiana, California, Colorado, New Jersey, Oklahoma and Tennessee. None of the children in the group received social security numbers or vaccinations. Although Alamo claimed that all the children were homeschooled, their homeschool program was not registered and Anthony Lane, the father of three other children in Alamo’s group (9-year-old Tim, 11-year-old Sarah, and 13-year-old Ashley, whom he had seen married to a 40-year-old man), stated that “They don’t do much schooling though, for someone who claims they home school their kids. I didn’t see a whole lot of kids going to school every day.”
Tony Alamo was arrested and charged with transporting minors across state lines to engage in sex. He was sentenced to 175 years in prison. Many of the parents in his group lost custodial rights to their children.
Date: September 20, 2008
Location: Fouke, Arkansas Read More
Posted: November 29, 2014 by clmccracken
2 Children of Latisha Lawson
Two children—Kierra King, born in 2000, and Jeziah King (right), born in 2007—were physically abused by their mother, Latisha Lawson (left). Kierra was homeschooled.
Lawson lived with the children’s father, Lawrence King, until October 2009. After they broke up, she moved in with her friend Natasha Hawkins and Hawkins’ three children. At this time Lawson began homeschooling Kierra and beating her with a belt and extension cords; she also became convinced that Jeziah and the other children were possessed by demons. In November 2009, Lawson forced all five children to undergo an exorcism ritual whereby they had to ingest olive oil and vinegar. When Jeziah refused, Lawson murdered him by suffocating him. She then kept his body in her bed for about a month and continued to leave him unburied for approximately one year. During this time Kierra was sometimes forced to touch his body as punishment.
The murder came to light after Lawson had moved out of Hawkins’ home, taking Jeziah’s body with her in a plastic bin. In December 2010, police officers performed a welfare check in Hawkins’ home and Hawkins revealed that Jeziah had been murdered. The police then located Lawson, who confessed. She was found guilty of murder, neglect of a dependent, and battery. She was sentenced to 61 years in prison.
Date: December 20, 2010
Location: Fort Wayne, Indiana Read More
Posted: November 28, 2014 by clmccracken
28 Children of Kathy and Dan Blackburn
Twenty-eight children adopted from Haiti (ranging in age from infant to 11 years when adopted in 1987), several with special needs, were neglected and physically abused by their parents, Kathy and Dan Blackburn. Several of the girls also reported being sexually abused by Dan Blackburn and, it is suggested, by their older brothers. The children were homeschooled. The Blackburns also had two biological sons (ages 20 and 18 in 1987) who were not abused.
The abuse came to light when some of the girls reported the sexual abuse to Kathy and she filed for divorce. Custody of the children was first awarded to Dan Blackburn but eventually awarded to Kathy Blackburn. Many of the children were subsequently enrolled in public school.
Date: 1995
Location: Shelbyville, Indiana Read More
Last Updated: July 3, 2021 by clmccracken
3 Grandchildren of James and Cheri Crawford
Three boys, ages 12, 11, and 8, were tortured by their grandparents, James and Cheri Crawford. The boys had been pulled from school to be homeschooled.
The boys had come to live with their grandparents after their father was murdered and their mother, a drug addict, abandoned them. The boys were starved and forced to eat spoiled food; they often had only a bucket for a bathroom. They were forced to do heavy manual labor and to stand at attention outside for hours at a time. The oldest boy was imprisoned in a trailer for a year and a half and spent most of the time blindfolded, resulting in a forehead scar. The 11-year-old was forced to shock his older brother with a shock collar and also had to sleep outside in a storage shed.
The abuse came to light when a neighbor witnessed Cheri abusing one of the children and called the authorities. Cheri and James Crawford entered Alford pleas and were sentenced to 8 and 7 years in prison, respectively.
Date: July 2009
Location: Hartsville, South Carolina Read More
Posted: November 25, 2014 by clmccracken
11 Children of Jeremy and Christine Long
Six girls and five boys, ages 10 months to 18 years, were severely neglected by their parents, Jeremy and Christine Long. The children were second-generation homeschoolers—their father, Jeremy Long, had been homeschooled and wanted the same for his children. However, when the children were rescued, they were illiterate and “didn’t know the days of the week, their ABC’s, or even how to spell their own names.” There was no food in the house and the youngest children were malnourished.
The Longs had begun living together when Jeremy was 16 and Christine was 17; their oldest child Miranda was born when they were 18 and 19 respectively. All the children were homebirthed and never received vaccinations or dental care. The Long children spent their lives “without food, water, electricity, heat, education, medical care, bedding or proper clothing and shoes.”
The Longs lost custody of their children and were charged with cruelty to children and failure to educate. Jeremy Long was sentenced to three years in prison; Christine Long did not receive prison time.
Date: July 31, 2008
Location: Hephzibah, Georgia Read More
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