Four girls—15-year-old twins Kelly and Colleen, Michaela (age 13), and Bridget (age 11)—were imprisoned and deprived of food by their father, Dr. Kenneth Yaw. The girls’ stepmother Rita Starceski knew about the abuse and did nothing to stop it. The girls were homeschooled.
Yaw and his first wife, Maureen, had 10 children, including one other girl (Kate, age 26) and five boys. The family originally lived in Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania, where Yaw worked as an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the children attended school. After Maureen’s death in 2001 from breast cancer, Yaw married Starceski in 2003 and “withdrew the children from activities and frequently changed homes and schools…A few of the older children left home before they turned 18 and were cut off from financial support.”
In 2007, the family moved to Las Cruces, NM where the children “were schooled at home and isolated. For such infractions as failing to clean up after the family dog, the girls later told police, they were sent to the garage and allowed out only to use the bathroom.” After the three older girls stole money in 2008 with the intent to purchase clothing and enroll in public school, Yaw imprisoned them in an unfurnished trailer across town with little food from June until August.
The abuse came to light after “Dr. Yaw got into an argument with a neighbor in the trailer park Aug. 5 and called police, who discovered the girls’ living situation and arrested the doctor and his wife.” Yaw and Starceski were each charged with six counts of felony child abuse. They were also later charged with child neglect by social services lawyers in Chautauqua County, New York.
Date: August 7, 2008
Location: Las Cruces, New Mexico Read More
Posted: September 1, 2014 by clmccracken
Helen Wells
Helen Wells, born c. 1979, was sexually abused by her father, Robert George Wells, starting at age three and ending only when she left home at age 24. Her mother knew about the abuse and did nothing. Helen’s brothers were not abused. Helen was homeschooled and stated “I never went to school. I was homeschooled and I was kept out of school for the purpose of concealing the crime. So I did correspondence to grade six and then no schooling after that. So I am self-educated.”
Helen first reported the abuse in 2004. In 2008, Robert Wells pleaded guilty to 33 charges including indecent treatment of a child and incest. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Date: 2008
Location: Kandanga, Noosa, Tewantin and Cooroy in Queensland, Australia Read More
Posted: September 1, 2014 by clmccracken
Ariel Winter, and 1 sibling
Child actress Ariel Winter (born Ariel Winter Workman, right), age 14, was abused by her mother, Chrisoula “Chrystal” Workman. Ariel’s older sister Shanelle Workman Gray (age 34, left) was also abused; she was removed from her mother’s care 20 years previously and placed in foster care. The girls’ brother, Jimmy Workman, was not abused. Ariel was homeschooled starting in second grade, including by private tutors and in online classes.
Court papers filed by Gray described “ongoing physical abuse (slapping, hitting, pushing) and emotional abuse (vile name-calling, personal insults about minor and minor’s weight, attempts to ‘sexualize’ minor, deprivation of food, etc.) for an extended period of time.” Ariel’s coworkers observed that Workman would only “allow her daughter to eat egg whites and raw vegetables.”
Ariel was removed from her mother’s care and placed with Gray in late 2012. The guardianship became permanent in 2014. No charges have been filed against Workman.
Date: October 3, 2012
Location: Los Angeles, California Read More
Posted: September 1, 2014 by rachel
Georgia and Patterson Inman
Twins Georgia Noel Lahi Inman and Walker Patterson Inman III (called ‘Patterson’), born in 1997 to Walker Patterson Inman Jr.—the heir to the Doris Duke fortune—and his fourth wife Daisha Inman (nee Aunday), were starved, imprisoned, and physically abused by their father and stepmother Daralee Inman (nee Steinhausen), as well as by several other caregivers.
Walker Inman was awarded custody of the twins in 2000 after his divorce from Daisha Inman, and he married Daralee in 2001. The abuse of the twins began almost immediately—they suffered from serious speech delays and did not know how to hold a pencil at age 4. They were homeschooled after second grade. “‘Home schooling,’ however, turned out to be little more than a revolving cast of tutors with no teaching experience.” In Wyoming, the twins were locked into their room at night and forced to relieve themselves in the corner. In South Carolina, they were kept locked in a feces-covered basement. Daralee hit Georgia with a baseball bat and pushed Patterson down the stairs. Walker punched Georgia in the face. A caregiver scalded them in the bathtub. They were repeatedly endangered by Walker and Daralee, who were both drug addicts—while high on drugs, Daralee crashed into a tree with the twins in the car; Walker detonated a tear-gas grenade in the house and forced the twins to play Russian Roulette. When they were rescued at age 12, both children were seriously underweight. The abuse was reported to child services at least four times, but Walker Inman’s money and connections allowed him to avoid consequences. When nannies noticed the abuse, they were immediately fired.
The children were rescued from the abuse after their father’s death in February 2010 from a drug overdose. Though Daralee attempted to keep the children, Daisha Inman eventually was able to gain custody of them in August 2010 by bringing “a court order, a fleet of police cars and two ambulances” to their Wyoming home. The children spent three months in a psychiatric facility before going to live with Daisha. Daralee has not been charged, although South Carolina’s Department of Social Services determined in April 2011 that she had abused the children.
Date: August 2010
Location: Grover, Wyoming and Georgetown, South Carolina Read More
Posted: September 1, 2014 by rachel
2 Children by Barbara Dean Baldwin and Tommy Lee Baldwin
Two boys, ages 10 and 9, were imprisoned and starved by their great-aunt Barbara Dean Baldwin and her husband Tommy Lee Baldwin. The boys were forced to live in a hot, windowless garage and were not allowed into the house to use the toilet or bathe. They were punished for making errors in their school work “by being denied food, sometimes for several days.” They “ate garbage and dog food and were sometimes punished by kneeling on a concrete floor with their arms raised over their heads.”
The Baldwins gained custody of the boys in September 1998 when their mother was imprisoned on a drug charge. The boys were removed from the Baldwins’ care for two months that year for being made to sleep in the garage, but they were later returned to the Baldwins. In October 2000 and September 2001 CPS investigated neglect reports but did not find evidence to substantiate them. The boys were eventually removed from school to be homeschooled.
The Baldwins were each charged with four counts of felony injury to a child by omission. Barbara Baldwin was sentenced to 40 years in prison and Tommy Baldwin was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Date: August 8, 2002
Location: Houston, Texas Read More
Last Updated: June 15, 2016 by clmccracken
2 children of Sandra and Jeffrey Weller, and 4 siblings
16-year-old twins, a boy and a girl, were beaten, imprisoned, and starved by their adoptive mother Sandra Weller and their stepfather Jeffrey Weller. The twins were pulled out of school to be homeschooled after school officials reported suspicions of abuse. Despite the abuse, the twins “participated weekly in home-school social events outside the home,” according to the Wellers’ lawyer.
The twins were originally adopted by Sandra Weller and her previous husband in California around 1997 and stated that they had been abused as long as they could remember. The Wellers locked them in a bedroom with one mattress, no electricity, and newspapers covering the windows. They were released once a day to eat canned vegetables. Because they were starving, they stole food from the locked refrigerator and pantry whenever they could; when the Wellers caught them, they were beaten with a heavy board. The girl, who was bald from malnutrition when they were found, took the brunt of the abuse and was also strangled and punched in the face. The twins were not permitted to talk to or touch the other members of the family. The other four children in the home—two boys aged 14 and 12 from Jeffrey Weller’s earlier marriage to Tina Toth (who had lived there since June 2011), a 10-year-old boy from Sandra Weller’s earlier marriage to Tim Graf, and the Wellers’ 4-year-old son—were also physically and emotionally abused, especially when they tried to sneak food to the twins.
The abuse came to light when the girl passed a note to her therapist and the police were notified. The Wellers were originally charged with five counts of second-degree assault and two counts of unlawful imprisonment. They were eventually convicted in 2013 of “three counts of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon, unlawful imprisonment, second-degree assault, and four counts of third-degree assault causing bodily harm. Jeffrey Weller was also found guilty of “strangulation of the girl twin” and on several counts of abusing his other four children. The Wellers were each sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Date: October 7, 2011
Location: Vancouver, Washington Read More
Posted: August 31, 2014 by rachel
4 Daughters of Kenneth Yaw and Rita Starceski
Four girls—15-year-old twins Kelly and Colleen, Michaela (age 13), and Bridget (age 11)—were imprisoned and deprived of food by their father, Dr. Kenneth Yaw. The girls’ stepmother Rita Starceski knew about the abuse and did nothing to stop it. The girls were homeschooled.
Yaw and his first wife, Maureen, had 10 children, including one other girl (Kate, age 26) and five boys. The family originally lived in Fox Chapel, Pennsylvania, where Yaw worked as an orthopedic surgeon at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the children attended school. After Maureen’s death in 2001 from breast cancer, Yaw married Starceski in 2003 and “withdrew the children from activities and frequently changed homes and schools…A few of the older children left home before they turned 18 and were cut off from financial support.”
In 2007, the family moved to Las Cruces, NM where the children “were schooled at home and isolated. For such infractions as failing to clean up after the family dog, the girls later told police, they were sent to the garage and allowed out only to use the bathroom.” After the three older girls stole money in 2008 with the intent to purchase clothing and enroll in public school, Yaw imprisoned them in an unfurnished trailer across town with little food from June until August.
The abuse came to light after “Dr. Yaw got into an argument with a neighbor in the trailer park Aug. 5 and called police, who discovered the girls’ living situation and arrested the doctor and his wife.” Yaw and Starceski were each charged with six counts of felony child abuse. They were also later charged with child neglect by social services lawyers in Chautauqua County, New York.
Date: August 7, 2008
Location: Las Cruces, New Mexico Read More
Posted: August 30, 2014 by rachel
Children of Samuel Thomas Patrick and Debra Lynn Patrick
Samuel Thomas Patrick fathered 9 children with his sister, Debra Lynn Patrick (pictured), and 4 grandchildren with his adolescent daughters. All 13 children were homebirthed and homeschooled.
The abuse came to light when workers at the cemetery where Samuel and Debra’s 8-month-old son Joshua had been buried in 1990 discovered that his coffin had been replaced by an empty styrofoam container. Police found Joshua’s coffin in the Patricks’ house, where it had been for 12 years. Samuel Patrick was charged with one count of incest and the children were placed with child services
Date: February 26, 2002
Location: Moore Haven, Florida Read More
Posted: August 30, 2014 by clmccracken
2 daughters of Johann and Kimery Jorg
Two girls, ages 13 and 11, were abused by their adoptive parents, Johann and Kimery Jorg. Both girls were made to sleep outside using a bucket for a bathroom, and they were not allowed to wear clothes. They were forced to run barefoot in the heat for hours and beaten with a wooden paddle as punishment for supposed “lying and stealing”. The older girl’s hair was also shaved off as punishment. They were systematically deprived of food; the older girl weighed only 60 lbs. when they were rescued and she had to be hospitalized. The Jorgs’ other two adopted children, girls ages 8 and 7, were not abused. The children were homeschooled.
The abuse came to light when the Jorgs went to Southwest Behavioral Health Services to seek help with the oldest girl’s “deviant” behavior. They informed the workers of how they had been disciplining their daughters, and the workers called child protective services. The Jorgs maintained that the punishments were in the girls’ best interest and were intended to “train” them. The Jorgs were each charged with four counts of child abuse.
Date: May 30, 2014
Location: Peoria, Arizona Read More
Posted: August 29, 2014 by clmccracken
2 boys by Barbara and Tommy Baldwin
From 1998 to 2002, Barbara and Tommy Baldwin cared for their two grand-nephews. They were forced to live in the garage and had their food restricted to the extent that they began eating dog food and garbage. The boys had originally attended school, but Barbara restricted their food intake and sent them without lunch and they began taking food from their classmates. Barbara subsequently withdrew the boys from school and began homeschooling them. When they did not complete their schoolwork to her satisfaction, she would deny them food or force them to kneel with their hands over their heads for long periods of time. Social workers found the boys when responding to an abuse tip in 2002. By this time, the two boys, then 9 and 10, had been nearly starved to death.
Date: August, 2002
Location: Missouri City, Texas Read More
Posted: August 29, 2014 by rachel
Brandon Clutter
Homeschooling mother Jaime Clutter was suffering from postpartum depression when she took her two children, Brandon, 10, and Katelyn, 6 months, outside on foot one morning in March, underdressed for the cold weather. All three were found drowned in a nearby creek, suffering from hypothermia. Investigators found no signs of a struggle and ruled the deaths were an accident.
Date: March 13, 2013
Location: New Albany, Indiana Read More
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