A 14 year old Colorado boy was kept padlocked in a small room with no light and boarded up windows by his mother, Amanda Joliff, for all but a few hours a day. The teen was allowed one meal a day, if that, which came to a total of about four meals a week. The family’s house was filthy, smelled of urine, and was infested with mice. When Joliff and her boyfriend, Richard Smith, left home for several weeks, the boy escaped and was found hiding under a neighbor’s porch. Joliff claimed the teen was “developmentally delayed” and said she locked him up because he “irritated” her. The teen had been removed from school to be homeschooled three years earlier and was registered as a homeschool student, but his mother was not educating him.
Date: September 2011
Location: Erie, Colorado Read More
Posted: May 5, 2013 by rachel
Budde Lee Clark
6 year old Budde Lee Clark was brutally beaten to death by his stepmother, Robin Gosnell. Gosnell lived in North Carolina and homeschooled the 6 year old and her 13 year old son, although she apparently did not actually educate either child. Officials said she had homeschooled—carefully following registration requirements—in order to hide the children away and control them.
Date: January 1997
Location: Cleveland, North Carolina Read More
Posted: May 5, 2013 by rachel Leave a Comment
Child of Mona and Russell Hauer
Mona and Russell Hauer starved their 8 year old adopted son, leaving him barely alive. The boy was the size of a 4 year old, his bones protruding and his abdomen distended. His parents routinely beat him with a broom handle and forced him to sleep in an unfinished basement with a bucket to urinate in and an alarm on the door so that he could not steal food. The abuse came to light when the boy was hospitalized because he was vomiting blood and found to have delayed bone growth due to malnutrition. The boy and his siblings, some of whom were also adopted, were homeschooled by their mother. Mona Hauer said family practiced “holistic medicine” and that the boy was on a strict liquid diet because his eating habits had been an “attempt to be in control of the home.” The family lived in Minnesota.
Date: October 2012
Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Read More
Posted: May 5, 2013 by rachel Leave a Comment
Child of Chad Chritton and Melinda Drabek-Chritton
A severely malnourished 15 year old girl was found wandering barefoot on the side of a road in the middle of a Wisconsin winter, crying, after escaping the basement dungeon where she had been confined for the past six years by her father, Chad Chritton, and stepmother, Melinda Drabek-Chritton. The girl had been pulled from school to be homeschooled after school officials began to suspect that she was abused. The girl had been systematically starved by her parents and was severely underweight, her growth stunted. The basement where she lived was rigged so that an alarm would go off if she tried to leave it. The girl was sometimes made to eat her own feces and drink her own urine and had been sexually assaulted by her 18 year old stepbrother, Joshua Drabek.
Date: February 2012
Location: Madison, Wisconsin Read More
Posted: May 5, 2013 by rachel Leave a Comment
Child of Robert Caravella and Carol Hann
At age 7, Robert Caravella and Carol Hann introduced their son to pornography. At age 8, his mother began raping him while his father watched. This became a regular occurrence. The sexual abuse came to light after the boy, then 13, was removed from his parents’ custody as a result of a County and Youth Services visit, which was prompted by a tip about the family’s squalid living conditions. The boy had been homeschooled through an online charter school, and was so sheltered from society that he did not know the sexual abuse was wrong or criminal until a horrified foster mother told him she did not expect him to have sex with her. Caravella and Hann denied all charges, and Hann described herself as “a good Christian woman.” The couple was convicted on all counts.
Date: June 2011
Location: Plymouth, Massachusetts Read More
Posted: May 5, 2013 by rachel Leave a Comment
Child of Amanda Joliff
A 14 year old Colorado boy was kept padlocked in a small room with no light and boarded up windows by his mother, Amanda Joliff, for all but a few hours a day. The teen was allowed one meal a day, if that, which came to a total of about four meals a week. The family’s house was filthy, smelled of urine, and was infested with mice. When Joliff and her boyfriend, Richard Smith, left home for several weeks, the boy escaped and was found hiding under a neighbor’s porch. Joliff claimed the teen was “developmentally delayed” and said she locked him up because he “irritated” her. The teen had been removed from school to be homeschooled three years earlier and was registered as a homeschool student, but his mother was not educating him.
Date: September 2011
Location: Erie, Colorado Read More
Posted: May 5, 2013 by rachel Leave a Comment
Khalil Wimes
Six year old Khalil Wimes was savagely beaten, tortured, and starved to death by his parents, Tina Cuffie and Floyd Wimes. The child slept on a soiled mattress in a room devoid of toys, and in the end his body was entirely covered with injuries. Khalil parents claimed they were homeschooling him, but appear to have not filed the necessary paperwork.
Date: March 19, 2012
Location: Philadelphia, Pennslyvania Read More
Posted: May 5, 2013 by rachel Leave a Comment
Dashawn Harris
Five year old Dashawn Harris was beaten to death by his mother, Lashay Patterson, 23, and her boyfriend, Christian Patrick, 25. Patrick became angry with the boy during a homeschooling session and beat the boy with a belt and hair dryer. Patterson said Patrick regularly beat the child during his kindergarten homeschooling lessons.
Date: November 30, 2012
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Read More
Last Updated: November 8, 2019 by rachel Leave a Comment
5 Children of Jeffrey and Rebecca Trebilcock
Jeffrey and Rebecca Trebilcock systematically starved their five adopted children, one boy and four girls, all between the ages of 10 and 13. The abuse came to light when the boy, 13, was admitted to the emergency room too weak to stand. After years of malnutrition and food deprivation, he was the size of a seven year old. The couple’s four biological children, three adult and one minor, were well fed. The couple had rigged the kitchen with alarms so that they would know if their adopted children tried to steal food. There were also allegations of severe and bloody physical abuse. The family lived in Washington state and the couple homeschooled their children. Neighbors expressed shock at the allegations and described the couple as loving Christian parents.
Date: March 1, 2011
Location: West Longview, Washington Read More
Posted: May 5, 2013 by rachel Leave a Comment
Hillary Adams
[cnnvideo url=’http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2011/11/03/pkg-tx-daughter-beating.cnn’ inline=’true’]
In 2004, 16 year old Hillary Adams, who has cerebral palsy, was violently beaten by her homeschooling father as a punishment for downloading music online. Hillary secretly videotaped the beating but did not release the video until eight years later, when she felt compelled to do so because of her father’s role as a Texas family court judge.
Date: 2004
Location: Arkansas County, Texas Read More
Posted: May 5, 2013 by rachel Leave a Comment
Child of Jeremiah Lovato
Jeremiah Lovato, a single father living in Colorado, pulled his 14 year old adopted son out of public school to homeschool him after suspicions arose that he was abusing the boy. Almost a year later Lovato’s brutal abuse came to light when his teenage son called the local sheriff’s office to report that he had been severely beaten by his father. Lovato was charged with child abuse and first degree assault.
Date: January 2010
Location: Cimarron Hills, Colorado Read More
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