10-year-old Miranda Crocket was tied up when she drowned in an ice cold bathtub, the culmination of months of abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriend. Miranda lived alone with her father, Dan Crockett, until her father’s girlfriend, Chandra Rose, moved in with them with her three children, aged 4, 6, and 11, in the summer of 2012. Miranda was withdrawn from school and was homeschooled by Chandra that fall alongside Chandra’s children. Chandra claims that Miranda threatened her children, and that the abuse she heaped on the girl was retaliation. Chandra locked Miranda in the bathroom, tied her up, forced her to take ice baths, and shut her in a hard plastic storage box barely big enough to fit her body. The day Miranda died, she had escaped from the locked bathroom and Chandra had retaliated by tying her hands to her ankles, tying a cord around her neck to cause her discomfort, shutting her in the storage box for several hours and, ultimately, putting her in the ice cold bath where she drowned. Chandra was tried and sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Date: November 24, 2012
Location: Fairview, Oregon Read More
Posted: January 10, 2014 by rachel
Colin David Jones
Paramedics responding to a 911 call on Christmas Eve about an “unresponsive” child found that 6-year-old child had physical injuries that suggested foul play. The child was taken to the regional hospital and then airlifted elsewhere for care, where he died four days later in spite of efforts to save his life, and the five other children in the home were taken into Walton County DFCS county. The boy’s adoptive parents, Louis David Jones, 39, and Jami Lea Jones, 36, were charged with aggravated battery and first-degree cruelty to a child. These charges were upgraded to murder after the boy’s death. Both parents were found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison. News reports described the family as a homeschooling church-going family.
Date: December 28, 2009
Location: Loganville, Georgia Read More
Posted: January 10, 2014 by rachel
3 Children by William Flynn Walker
William Flynn Walker was charged with transporting three children out of Alabama and engaged in sex acts with them. Walker was a well-known member of the Shelby County homeschool community, and was involved in founding a prominent homeschool umbrella school, Evangel Christian School, a ministry of Evangel Church, PCA. Walker was also charged for sexual abuse and first-degree sodomy. Walker was indicted in federal court and sentenced to 27 years in prison without possibility of parole.
Date: September 28, 2005
Location: Shelby County, Alabama Read More
Posted: January 10, 2014 by clmccracken
Madeline Kara Neumann
Madeline Kara Neumann, 11, died of undiagnosed diabetes at the home of her parents, Leilani and Dave Neumann. She had been growing weak for several weeks prior to her death, but her parents—Pentecostal Christians who were associated with the Unleavened Bread Ministry—declined to get medical help for her due to their belief that visiting a doctor is idolatry. Despite pleas for treatment by her grandparents, Kara fell into a coma. Her aunt Ariel Gomez reported the situation to the authorities, and police were on their way to the residence to perform a welfare check when Kara stopped breathing. Her condition would have been easily treatable with medical intervention. Kara had been withdrawn from public school the previous spring and had been homeschooled during the fall. Her parents were convicted of second-degree reckless homicide in 2009 and sentenced to each serve one month in jail each year for six years. Their conviction was upheld in 2013.
Date: March 23, 2008
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Location: Weston, Wisconsin
Posted: January 10, 2014 by rachel
Boy by Joseph Maddock
A 10-year-old boy was sexually molested by his homeschool teacher, Joseph Maddock, 34. The boy’s family had met Maddock in early 2012 while Maddock was teaching at Andrews Academy, a local private school. Maddock convinced the parents to pull the boy out of school and let him homeschool the boy. Maddock homeschooled the boy daily in his home from September 2012 to February 2013, when the abuse came to light. The boy’s family did not want the case to go to trial, and so arrived at a plea agreement that included both the loss of Maddock’s teaching license and probation.
Date: February 2013
Location: St. Charles County, Missouri Read More
Posted: December 18, 2013 by stirringsofconsciousness
Teddy Foltz-Tedesco and 2 siblings
Teddy Foltz-Tedesco, 14, was beaten unconscious by his mother’s boyfriend, Zaryl G. Bush. Bush then threatened Teddy’s younger twin brothers, 8, into helping him cover up the scene of the crime. Teddy was not taken to the hospital until several hours after the incident and was pronounced dead five days later, after suffering from internal bleeding and brain contusions. The abuse started three year prior, when Bush started dating Widdersheim. The family became increasingly isolated, and Teddy’s father did not see him after his tenth birthday. Two years before Teddy’s death a grandmother tried to intervene in the family, but Widdersheim refused to believe her children. Friends and neighbors contacted social services, but after teachers at Teddy’s school started an inquiry with the Ohio children’s services agency, Widdersheim withdrew her children from public school to homeschool them. Zaryl Bush was sentenced to 33 years to life in prison after pleading guilty to murder charges, four counts of child endangering, and two counts of intimidation. Shain Widdersheim was sentenced to 15 years in prison on four counts of child endangerment and obstructing justice. On December 17, 2013, State Senator Capri Cafaro introduced Senate Bill 248, “Teddy’s Law”, which would require a school superintendent to check names of parents who propose to homeschool against child abuse and children’s services agencies’ lists.
Date: January 26, 2013
Location: Struthers, Ohio Read More
Posted: December 4, 2013 by rachel
Miranda Crockett
10-year-old Miranda Crocket was tied up when she drowned in an ice cold bathtub, the culmination of months of abuse at the hands of her father’s girlfriend. Miranda lived alone with her father, Dan Crockett, until her father’s girlfriend, Chandra Rose, moved in with them with her three children, aged 4, 6, and 11, in the summer of 2012. Miranda was withdrawn from school and was homeschooled by Chandra that fall alongside Chandra’s children. Chandra claims that Miranda threatened her children, and that the abuse she heaped on the girl was retaliation. Chandra locked Miranda in the bathroom, tied her up, forced her to take ice baths, and shut her in a hard plastic storage box barely big enough to fit her body. The day Miranda died, she had escaped from the locked bathroom and Chandra had retaliated by tying her hands to her ankles, tying a cord around her neck to cause her discomfort, shutting her in the storage box for several hours and, ultimately, putting her in the ice cold bath where she drowned. Chandra was tried and sentenced to twenty years in prison.
Date: November 24, 2012
Location: Fairview, Oregon Read More
Posted: December 1, 2013 by rachel
Jared, Joshua, Emily, and Hannah Wood
Raymond Wood shot and killed his pregnant wife, Tina, and four of his six children, Jared, Joshua, Emily, and Hannah, aged 10, 8, 7, and 5. Moriah and Katlin, aged 3 and 18 months, were wounded but survived. Wood was a religious man who was described as a loving father and was devoted to his family, but who had struggled with depression and mental illness for years. Wood sometimes thought he was God, sometimes thought he was invisible, and did not always take his medication. Tina homeschooled all of the couple’s children and was well spoken of in her church community. Ray is in Fulton State Hospital for his mental illness and has never been tried for his crime.
Date: February 14, 2000
Location: Warrensburg, Missouri Read More
Posted: December 1, 2013 by rachel
Mitch Comer
Mitch Comer was removed from school after the eighth grade to be homeschooled by his mother and stepfather, Sheila and Paul Comer, who proceeded to imprison in his room and abuse him. On his eighteenth birthday, his parents bought him a one-way bus ticket to Los Angeles, gave him pamphlets for homeless shelters there, and threw away all reminders of him. He was found wandering the streets of Los Angeles. He was so malnourished that police thought he was a preteen child. The teen’s skin was translucent and his abuse had grown so bad that he had seen neither sunlight nor his younger sisters, who lived in the same home, in the past two years. Mitch’s sisters were removed by social services and his parents were arrested, tried, and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. The family’s neighbors were shocked when they learned that a teenage boy had lived in the home.
Date: October, 2012
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Location: Dallas, Georgia
Posted: December 1, 2013 by rachel
Emani Moss
Police found 10-year-old Emani Moss’s burned body in a trash can several days after she was starved to death at the hands of her father and stepmother, Eman and Tiffany Moss. After a tip from a school employee, social services had intervened in Emani’s family three years earlier, removing her from her parents’ home for a brief period in early 2010. Two individuals, presumably Emani’s father and stepmother, were required to take anger management courses and Emani was returned to the home on social services’ determination that the risk of harm was reduced. Emani’s case was closed in November of 2010. In May 2012, school officials reported welts that were found on the girl, but social services determined the marks were the result of legal corporal punishment. That summer Emani’s parents withdrew her from school to homeschool her, and the girl was not seen again by either school officials or her relatives.
Date: November 2, 2013
Location: Smyrna, Georgia Read More
Last Updated: July 3, 2021 by rachel
3 Children of Fernando and Sophia Richter
Two girls, ages 12 and 13, escaped through a window in their room and ran to alert a neighbor to their plight after their stepfather threatened them with a knife. Police found a third girl, aged 17, locked in a separate bedroom. The girls’ mother reported that they were being homeschooled. All three girls were dirty and malnourished, and they reported that they had not had a bath in six months. The girls’ rooms were rigged with padlocks, alarms, and video surveillance, and the girls were fed only once a day. The girls had been imprisoned in their rooms for months, with loud music or static (if the girls misbehaved) piped into their crudely soundproofed rooms 24/7. Several neighbors said they were unaware that there were children living in the home. The charges against the girls’ stepfather include sexual abuse.
Date: November 26, 2013
Location: Tucson, Arizona Read More
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