8 year old Willie Robinson, who died of pneumonia due to Hodgkin’s lymphoma, would have survived if given proper cancer treatment. His parents, Monica Hussing and William Robinson Sr., had not provided Willie or their five other children, ages 5, 6, 7, 13, and 14, with medical care in three years. After receiving a concerned phone call, a caseworker had become involved with the family the previous year, and had noted that Willie’s neck was oddly swollen. The caseworker urged Willie’s parents to put him in school and obtain medical coverage for him, and Monica promised to get her medical benefits in order but said she wanted to homeschool Willie after a bullying incident on a bus. When Monica did not follow their case plan goals, legal action was threatened and the family responded by moving across the state. A month later, Willie died. Monica and William Sr. were convicted of both medical neglect and educational neglect.
Date: March 22, 2008
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
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Posted: July 16, 2013 by rachel
2 Children of Paul and Amanda Lavoe
Paul Lavoe beat his teenage daughter and a teenage relative adopted from Ghana with electrical cords in what one doctor called an “extremely violent assault.” The two girls were enrolled in a virtual school but quickly fell behind in their work because their parents expected them to watch their three younger children while both parents worked each day. The beatings were routine and were often carried out using whatever objects Lavoe had on hand at his motorcycle shop. Lavoe claimed the beatings were punishments for stealing.
Date: April 16, 2012
Location: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
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Posted: July 16, 2013 by rachel
15 Children of Robert Hale (Papa Pilgrim)
Robert Hale served as midwife at the births of all fifteen of his children. The family homesteaded, homeschooled (although little education took place), and lived in isolation in the Sangre de Cristo mountains of New Mexico until 1998, when Hale, who began calling himself Papa Pilgrim, moved his wife and children to Alaska. In 2002 Hale moved his children into further isolation, purchasing several hundred acres in the Alaskan wilderness beyond even the reach of roads. Hale claimed that years before a shaft of celestial light had given him a religious awakening, and that God had now told him to move to the wilderness of Alaska in order to keep his children from the temptations of the modern world. To all outward appearances the children were handsome and capable, albeit living lives from a century before. The family sang together and performed across the state, and their battle against the state to retain rights to a wilderness road to their property had made them famous and roundly praised. But this was all only the outward appearance. In 2005 the family’s dark secrets came to light after the older daughters made a run for it, risking a dangerous dash across the wilderness to escape their father’s totalitarian madness. Hale was arrested, and it came out that he had regularly whipped his sons brutally and sexually abused his oldest daughter, telling her that it was every father’s God-given right to have a “special daughter” and that he would lighten up on the boys’ beatings if she acquiesced to his desires. The home environment was severely authoritarian, and the children were required to call their father “Lord.” Hale had also been beating his wife for years. Hale was sentenced to fourteen years in prison, but died unrepentant before finishing his term.
Date: November 2005
Location: McCarthy, Alaska
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Posted: July 16, 2013 by rachel
Child of Ardee Verlon Tyler and Penny Sue Tyler
Ardee Verlon Tyler and Penny Sue Tyler adopted five girls from Liberia in 2005. The couple had two older biological children. The second adopted daughter, age 8 when she first arrived in the family and 10 when the children were finally removed, was singled out for abuse by her adoptive parents. They tied her with a rope during the day and restrained her in the basement at night, beating her, depriving her of food, and once forcing her to spend the night outside in the cold for stealing a cookie. She was also sexually assaulted by her older adoptive brother (he pleaded no contest at trial), and her older adoptive sister cooperated with their parents in restraining her. The Tylers were convicted of child abuse and each received ten year sentences. The Tyler’s older biological son was sentenced to two years and their biological older daughter received a 90 day sentence. The abuse did not come to light until the Tylers were in the process of handing the girl off to another family. The Tylers homeschooled all of the children and a retired teacher who came in to help out with the girls’ education served as a key witness against the couple in court. The other adopted children were also abused—deprived of food and called degrading names—but none to the extent that the second adopted daughter was. The couple asserted that the second adopted daughter was controlled by Satan and that the abuse they subjected her to was for her own good.
Date: October 1, 2007
Location: Fairview, Oklahoma
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Posted: July 16, 2013 by rachel
3 Children of Laurie Williamson
As early as 2000, Laurie Williamson’s eldest son’s teacher began expressing concern about him as they watched a once-happy preschooler become thin and withdrawn. Williamson responded by withdrawing him from school and homeschooling all three of her children. By the time Williamson’s three children—Tom, Roger, and Chrissy—were 11, 9, and 6, they were on a host of medications for a long list of medical conditions and were extremely underweight, wheelchair-bound, and fed through feeding tubes. She kept them indoors in cool darkened rooms. Williamson claimed that the three children’s conditions were such that none would live past their teen years, and portrayed herself as a saint for caring for them. When some new friends became suspicious, they reported her to CPS and to local prosecutors. The three children were removed from the home, hospitalized, and weaned off of their medications. The year was 2006. Doctors found that all three were perfectly healthy, and that Williamson had been for years using a variety of methods to falsely convince doctors that her children were ill. Williamson was found guilty of child abuse and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. Williamson was diagnosed with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy.
Date: March 2006
Location: Houston, Texas
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Posted: July 16, 2013 by rachel
2 Children of Ingrid Brewer
Ingrid Brewer adopted two children out of foster care, and reported them missing on January 15 less than a year later. The children, an 8 year old boy and a 7 year old girl, were found laying by a road not far from their home, wearing only light clothing in the mid-20s weather and hiding under a blanket. The children, whom Brewer homeschooled, told the sheriff’s deputies that they had run away from home because Brewer beat them. They reported that Brewer locked them in separate bedrooms while she went to work each day and sometimes tied their wrists with zip-ties, beating them with an electrical cord or a hammer and depriving them of food. Both children had injuries that backed up their claims, including wrist marks indicating zip-tie restraint.
Date: January 15, 2013
Location: Palmdale California Read More
Posted: July 16, 2013 by rachel
Shelby and Shasta Miller
In early April, Shane Miller pulled his two daughters, Shelby, 8, and Shasta, 4, out of school to homeschool them. A month later he murdered both girls along with their mother, Sandy.
Date: May 6, 2013
Location: Shingletown, California Read More
Posted: July 16, 2013 by rachel
Willie Robinson
8 year old Willie Robinson, who died of pneumonia due to Hodgkin’s lymphoma, would have survived if given proper cancer treatment. His parents, Monica Hussing and William Robinson Sr., had not provided Willie or their five other children, ages 5, 6, 7, 13, and 14, with medical care in three years. After receiving a concerned phone call, a caseworker had become involved with the family the previous year, and had noted that Willie’s neck was oddly swollen. The caseworker urged Willie’s parents to put him in school and obtain medical coverage for him, and Monica promised to get her medical benefits in order but said she wanted to homeschool Willie after a bullying incident on a bus. When Monica did not follow their case plan goals, legal action was threatened and the family responded by moving across the state. A month later, Willie died. Monica and William Sr. were convicted of both medical neglect and educational neglect.
Date: March 22, 2008
Location: Cleveland, Ohio
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Posted: July 16, 2013 by rachel
Children of Earl and Deborah Dinkler
A 13 year old girl and an 11 year old boy were forced by their adoptive parents, Earl and Deborah Dinkler, to run 15 laps around the property before breakfast each day. This had been going on for four years when the abuse came to light. If Earl and Deborah were not satisfied with the children’s speed, they beat the children with a belt, a miniature baseball bat, and a bamboo rod. The Dinklers also withheld food and water as punishment. The abuse came to light when the girl ran to a neighbor’s house and hid one morning, exhausted, panting, and afraid of being punished for not doing her exercises. Earl and Deborah were found guilty and convicted of cruelty.
Date: August 9, 2007
Location: McDonough, Georgia Read More
Posted: July 16, 2013 by rachel
Child of Todd and Lisa Mortensen
Todd Mortensen is alleged to have sexually abused a 12 year old girl placed in his home. The girl was in the process of being adopted by another family, but when this family began to struggle with caring for her they made private arrangements to place her with the Mortensens. Todd and Lisa Mortensen homeschooled the girl along with two other foster daughters and one adopted daughter. Todd convinced the 12 year old that their sexual relationship was appropriate in the eyes of God by showing her an error on her baptismal certificate that listed him as her husband. The family was Mormon. The girl was not Todd’s only victim, and this was not his first offense.
Date: April 4, 2010
Location: Farmington, New Mexico Read More
Posted: July 16, 2013 by rachel
Esther Combs
Esther Combs, originally named Elsa Garcia, was taken from Baptist Children’s Home in Valparaiso, Indiana, by Joseph and Evangeline Combs at 4 months old in 1978. Esther was never actually adopted, although she grew up believing that she had been. Joseph, a Baptist minister, sexually abused Esther and Evangeline beat her with a baseball bat and a hose, burned her with a curling iron, and pulled out chunks of her flesh with pliers, leaving more than 400 scars across her body. Esther was treated as a family servant, and while her parents were ostensibly homeschooling her she was not actually educated. The Combs kept Esther imprisoned in their home even after she turned 18; the abuse came to light after she was hospitalized following a suicide attempt at age 19 and doctors found evidence of prior brutal physical abuse. The Combs were arrested in 1998; Joseph Combs was sentenced to 114 years in prison for kidnapping, rape, assault and perjury, while Evangeline Combs was sentenced to 65 years for kidnapping and child abuse. Esther has since been reunited with her birth parents.
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