Couple charged with abusing adopted kids

Associated Press

ashtabula

A husband and wife kept their two adopted daughters in northeastern Ohio locked in a bedroom for all but a few hours each day where they were beaten, given little to eat and sexually abused by the man over at least two years, prosecutors said.

The girls, now both teens, reluctantly told authorities about what had happened only after they picked a lock on their bedroom door in August 2013, slipped out of the house and crashed their parents’ vehicle, according to the Ashtabula County prosecutor’s office.

Another adopted child, a mentally challenged man, also was abused by the couple and kept in a locked bedroom while a fourth adopted boy apparently was not abused, said Nicholas Iarocci, the county prosecutor.

Both parents were indicted last week on charges of kidnapping, felonious assault and child endangering. The husband was indicted on sexual battery and gross sexual imposition charges.

The couple were being held in jail, but neither has appeared in court. They are likely to be arraigned next week, Iarocci said Monday.

The Associated Press is not naming the suspects in order not to identify the girls who made the allegations of sexual assault.

All four of the children were adopted about 11 years, but it’s not clear when the abuse started, Iarocci said.

The two girls, who are sisters, and the adopted adult son were kept in bedrooms with boarded-up windows at the home outside Ashtabula, Iarocci said.