Nine boys, ages 12 to 17, were beaten, starved, and imprisoned by Nathan Jessop. All were current or former members of the FLDS who had been sent by their parents to live with Jessop due to their supposed disobedience; several of the boys did not know what they had done to be sent there and one reported that he had been sent away for exchanging text messages with a girl. Tammy Jessop, one of Nathan’s stepmothers, homeschooled the boys, although “education appeared to stop when the boys were old enough to pursue a GED diploma.”
Some of the boys had been with Jessop since late 2012, when they had lived in Wyoming. In early 2013 they moved to Idaho, where Tammy and two girls, ages 20 and 16, joined them in an adjoining home. One of the boys was Nathan Jessop’s son, age 16; three were his stepsons; and three others were his nephews. The boys were beaten with boards and brooms; pantries were kept locked and the boys were not allowed to eat breakfast unless they woke up by 6 am. The boys were punished by being sent out into the cold without jackets and one of the boys was imprisoned for two days in a furnace room. The boys were also exploited for their labor, being forced to work without pay making furniture for Jessop to sell.
The abuse came to light when one of the boys ran away and reported it to Holding Out Help, a group that assists people leaving polygamous families. The other eight boys were removed from the home by social services. Two of these, brothers, chose to remain in foster care, while the other six were returned to their parents. Jessop pleaded guilty to three counts of misdemeanor injury to a child: one from his imprisonment of the boy in the furnace room, and two from his failure to report to the authorities that both his son and the boy who contacted HOH had run away. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
Date: July 10, 2014
Location: Big Piney, Wyoming; Pocatello, Idaho Read More
Last Updated: July 3, 2021 by clmccracken
Children by Timothy and Karen Tolin
Three boys, ages 12, 14, and 19, with severe mental and physical disabilities, along with three disabled adults, were neglected by their adoptive parents, Timothy and Karen “Sue” Tolin. The children were homeschooled.
The 19-year-old was autistic and legally blind and was imprisoned naked in a locked crib. There had been previous social services involvement regarding the children being educationally neglected, but HSLDA had intervened and agreed to perform home visits to monitor the children. These visits were apparently not conducted.
The Tolins were charged with unlawful imprisonment and vulnerable adult abuse.
Date: October 20, 2014
Location: Paris Township, Michigan Read More
Posted: November 8, 2014 by rachel
Boy by Michael Krause
C.H., a 12-year-old boy, was groomed and forced to appear in pornography by Michael Alvin Krause, his homeschool teacher.
Krause befriended the boy’s mother, Misty Hebert, and grandmother Nancy Hunt, claiming that he had been “a Pentecostal preacher and had helped ‘problem teens’ by home-schooling them.” Hebert pulled C.H. from school after he experienced problems and engaged Krause to be C.H.’s homeschool teacher. Eventually C.H. began living with Krause in his trailer, where Krause took nude photos of C.H.
The abuse came to light when Krause took C.H. on a trip to Wisconsin and Hebert was informed by Wisconsin authorities that Krause had previously been investigated for “possession of child pornography and abuse of two other boys,” the 10- and 11-year-old sons of his former roommate Betty Baum. Hebert entered Krause’s trailer and found computers containing nude photos of C.H. and the two other boys. She turned the evidence over to the Texas authorities.
Krause was found guilty of possession of child pornography and indecency with a child sexual contact. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.
Date: December 8, 2003
Location: Gilchrist, Texas Read More
Posted: November 7, 2014 by clmccracken
2 children of Brenda Frazier
An 11-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl were tortured by their grandparents, LaDonna (right) and Johnny Stilwell, and their mother Brenda Frazier (not pictured), using an electric cattle prod. The boy was also locked in his room with a bucket for a toilet. The children were homeschooled.
The abuse came to light when the boy informed social services about it. The Stilwells and Frazier were charged with and convicted of child abuse. LaDonna Stilwell was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but her sentence was suspended. Johnny Stilwell was sentenced to 20 years of probation. Frazier was sentenced to 15 years of probation.
Date: November 2002
Location: Enid, Oklahoma Read More
Posted: November 7, 2014 by clmccracken
Children by George Johnston, 4 others
At least 6 children were ritually sexually assaulted by George Otis Johnston (right, sometimes identified as ‘Johnson’), the pastor of Grandview Valley Baptist Church North, and four elders at its sister church Grand Valley Independent Baptist Church: pastor Raymond Lambert (left), his wife Patty Lambert, and her brothers Paul and Tom Epling. All the children in Grandview Valley compound were homeschooled at the Grand Valley Christian Academy. Some of the abuse occurred while Johnston was tutoring one of the children in algebra.
The abuse came to light in May 2006 when eight members of the commune walked away from the church with no money or physical belongings. One of the women told authorities about abuses that had taken place at the compound. In August 2006, the approximately 20 children who remained at the compound were taken into custody by social services. Johnston and the others were charged with a number of felonies; however, all of the charges were eventually dropped due to witnesses’ being unwilling to testify, the statute of limitations being invoked (some of the abuse had occurred in the 1970s and 1980s), and the victims’ desire to avoid further victimization in court.
Date: August 24, 2006
Location: Granby, Missouri; Pineville, Missouri Read More
Posted: November 5, 2014 by clmccracken
5 children by Patrick and Sherry Kelley
Five children, girls aged 15, 14, and 6 and boys aged 13 and 11, were burned, beaten, starved, and imprisoned by their adoptive parents, Patrick (center) and Sherry Kelley. Their grandparents, George and Shirley Long, knew about the abuse but did nothing to stop it. After the children were withdrawn from school when the family moved to Big Lake, “the Kelleys soon gave up trying to home school them.”
The children were placed with the Kelleys in 1998 after being removed from their parents, who were substance abusers. They were forced to work outside 20 hours a day. They were beaten with metal pipes and shovels. They were sometimes forced to sleep outside in the Alaska winter with no heat. The younger boy, who now goes by T.J. White (pictured at right), suffered burns over a large part of his body which went untreated; he also lost a finger to frostbite and had his arm broken by a beating. The children were locked in bedrooms and tied to beds; the older boy was chained to a tree and imprisoned in a coffin-like sealed box. They were punished for eating and deprived of food.
The abuse came to light when George Long called the police after one of the children received a particularly vicious beating. Sherry and Patrick Kelley were each charged with 9 felonies and 34 misdemeanors; in a later plea agreement they Sherry pleaded no contest to assault and criminal nonsupport while Patrick pleaded no contest to child endangerment. In November 2006 they were sentenced to time served. George Long was convicted of assault and sentenced to time served.
Date: July 9, 2004
Location: Big Lake, Wasilla, Alaska Read More
Posted: November 5, 2014 by clmccracken
Judah Cobble
Judah Cobble, age 12, was repeatedly spanked with a belt by his father, Donald Cobble, a minister at the Christian Teaching and Worship Center. Judah’s teachers reported suspected abuse to social services, who found that there was substantial risk to Judah, who had ADD and “arthrogryposis, a congenital muscle condition which require[d] him to wear braces on his back and legs.” However, Judah’s case was closed shortly thereafter. Donald Cobble then withdrew his son from school to homeschool him. He later sued social services and won.
Date: March 1997
Location: Woburn, Massachusetts Read More
Posted: November 5, 2014 by clmccracken
Amber Nicklas
Amber Rose Nicklas, age 13 months, was abducted from her foster parents in Norwalk, California in September 2003 by three of her teenage biological aunts. Though two of the girls were caught, the third managed to escape with Amber, who was missing for seven years. Amber was raised by a loving Romany family in Arizona who did not know she had been abducted—they were told that her drug addict mother had given her up. However, they did not have any identifying paperwork for her, so she could not be enrolled in school. Instead she was homeschooled in the Romany tradition, although when she was found she could not read or write, although she was bilingual in English and Romany (mistakenly identified in several news sources as ‘Romanian’).
She was discovered in 2010 after police received a tip about her whereabouts; she was subsequently returned to her foster parents.
Date: July 14, 2010
Location: Phoenix, Arizona Read More
Posted: November 4, 2014 by clmccracken
7 children of JoAnn and Michael McGuckin
Seven children—Erina (age 19, right), Kathryn (16), Benjamin (14), Mary (13), James (11), Frederick (9), and Jane (8)—were starved and neglected by their parents, Michael and JoAnn McGuckin (center). All were homeschooled.
Both Michael and JoAnn suffered from mental illness, and the family lived in poverty completely off the grid. The children subsisted mainly on lily pads and pond water; the house was filled with garbage. Erina, the oldest, was primarily responsible for homeschooling the children and caring for her youngest sister. Erina left home in 2000 to join the military but was medically discharged due to complications of long-term malnourishment. Then, in May 2001, Michael McGuckin died of malnourishment after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis. These events prompted Erina to report the family. When authorities arrived to remove the children, a five-day standoff ensued.
JoAnn McGuckin was arrested on charges of child injury which were later dismissed. She was reunited with her children in 2002.
Date: May 29, 2001
Location: Sandpoint, Idaho Read More
Posted: November 3, 2014 by clmccracken
Children of Peter Hansen
A 13-year-old boy was starved and imprisoned in a bathroom by his father, Peter D. Hansen. The boy’s 11-year-old sister was also starved. Both were homeschooled.
After the Hansens were evicted from their home in 2009, they took up residence in their Seventh-Day Adventist church. Hansen kept his children on a strict vegetarian diet with two meals per day. As punishment for disobedience, the boy was repeatedly locked in a cold church bathroom with no light, sometimes for over a week at a time.
The abuse was discovered after a call to the child abuse hotline. The courts did not find enough evidence to convict Hansen for food deprivation, but he was convicted for the imprisonment. He was sentenced to three years in prison but only served 100 days. The children’s mother, who lived with them, was not charged.
Date: November 2009
Location: Springfield, Missouri Read More
Posted: October 22, 2014 by clmccracken
9 boys by Nathan and Tammy Jessop
Nine boys, ages 12 to 17, were beaten, starved, and imprisoned by Nathan Jessop. All were current or former members of the FLDS who had been sent by their parents to live with Jessop due to their supposed disobedience; several of the boys did not know what they had done to be sent there and one reported that he had been sent away for exchanging text messages with a girl. Tammy Jessop, one of Nathan’s stepmothers, homeschooled the boys, although “education appeared to stop when the boys were old enough to pursue a GED diploma.”
Some of the boys had been with Jessop since late 2012, when they had lived in Wyoming. In early 2013 they moved to Idaho, where Tammy and two girls, ages 20 and 16, joined them in an adjoining home. One of the boys was Nathan Jessop’s son, age 16; three were his stepsons; and three others were his nephews. The boys were beaten with boards and brooms; pantries were kept locked and the boys were not allowed to eat breakfast unless they woke up by 6 am. The boys were punished by being sent out into the cold without jackets and one of the boys was imprisoned for two days in a furnace room. The boys were also exploited for their labor, being forced to work without pay making furniture for Jessop to sell.
The abuse came to light when one of the boys ran away and reported it to Holding Out Help, a group that assists people leaving polygamous families. The other eight boys were removed from the home by social services. Two of these, brothers, chose to remain in foster care, while the other six were returned to their parents. Jessop pleaded guilty to three counts of misdemeanor injury to a child: one from his imprisonment of the boy in the furnace room, and two from his failure to report to the authorities that both his son and the boy who contacted HOH had run away. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail.
Date: July 10, 2014
Location: Big Piney, Wyoming; Pocatello, Idaho Read More
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