Spain, Oviedo — The Civil Guard is investigating the parents of three children, ages 8 and 10, who had been locked inside their home for four years in unsanitary conditions. It was a neighbour who raised the alarm: she heard children’s voices but never saw them.
The press has dubbed the house the “house of horrors,” a fitting name for what the Oviedo Local Police found in the Asturian municipality of Fitoria (northern Spain). The three children, two 8-year-old twins and their 10-year-old older brother, had not seen the sun since 2021. They were neglected and reacted with fear when they saw the officers.
The couple, a German man and an American woman, aged 53 and 48 respectively, kept their children locked up, never letting them out. The children wore diapers and were forbidden to have any contact with the outside world.
They had very limited time to look out the window—that was their only entertainment. Furthermore, they were required to adhere to strict schedules, even for bathroom breaks, and were treated like babies.
Everything suggests that after the COVID pandemic, the parents became obsessed and shut themselves in with their children. According to neighbours, they only opened the door to pick up groceries, and the siblings never set foot outside. The house was filled with masks and medications.
It was a neighbour who alerted the authorities, as she heard children’s voices, but she never saw the children playing outside the house. When the local police officers arrived at the house, the father opened the door to them, in poor physical condition, and asked them to wear masks and maintain their distance from the children.
Upon entering, the officers observed the children wearing three masks and in a neglected state. They also clung to their mother and were terrified of seeing other people up close. A cat also lived in the house, surrounded by its own feces. The siblings were all wearing diapers, despite being too old for that.
Children React to Outdoors with Awe After Years in Isolation
The children’s last medical records were from 2019 and were taken in Germany. The mother said she had intended to have her children checked, but had let time pass. When they left the house, the siblings were barely coordinated, but were very happy to be able to go outside, according to local media.
The researchers who freed the children were impressed by the children’s reaction to being outside. They reported that they touched the grass with fascination, as if they had never been outdoors before. The children were taken to the University Hospital of Oviedo for a general evaluation.
3x Energy Use in a Home Filled with Waste
According to El Español, the house had numerous air purifiers, and the family “was spending three times more than usual in a conventional home, to the point that the owner of the house thought she had a problem with the water supply.”
Despite this obsession with breathing clean air, the house was filled with trash. Reports state that pads and tampons were found under the double bed and that the guest bathroom had been turned into a dumping ground for the children’s dirty diapers.
The parents were arrested by the Civil Guard and are being held in pretrial detention while the relevant authorities conduct an investigation. The siblings have been placed under the guardianship of the Social Services of the Principality of Asturias.