3 Children Rescued from ‘House of Horrors’ After Being Locked Inside by Parents Since COVID-19 Pandemic: Reports

• Police in Spain launched an investigation after neighbors reported that three children at a home in Oviedo had not been going to school
• When officers went inside the home, they found it littered with trash and filled up with medication and masks, according to local media outlets
• The children had reportedly been locked inside the home since 2021

A German couple living in Spain has been arrested after reportedly subjecting their three children to living inside what officials described as a “house of horrors,” according to multiple outlets.

The Oviedo Police Department said it rescued three children from a home in the neighborhood of Oviedo, Spain, on Monday, April 28, over three years after they were locked up inside following the final wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to translated reports by local media outlets El Comercio, El Mundo and Spanish newspaper ABC.

The children’s parents — identified as a 53-year-old German man and his 48-year-old American wife, who also owned a German passport — were arrested and charged with domestic violence with habitual psychological abuse and child abandonment, according to police, per ABC. The outlet and El Mundo reported that the children were 8-year-old twins and a 10-year-old.

The Oviedo Police Department did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.

An investigation into the family began after a neighbor filed a complaint on April 14 about children residing in the home who haven’t been attending school, according to El Comercio. This prompted an investigation by Oviedo police, who collected testimonies from other neighbors and records of the home.

“Initially, there was nothing that drew particular attention,” Oviedo Police Chief Javier Lozano said in a press conference, per Italian newspaper Il Messaggero. However, things changed when they delved further into their investigation.

Police found that the home had been rented out by the family in October 2021, and only the name of the father was registered on the home, according to the outlet. Officers also witnessed the father only leaving the home to pick up grocery deliveries and mail, and neighbors told police that they had not seen the family leave the home since December 2021, per El Comcercio and El Mundo.

When officers approached the home on April 28, the father reportedly “agreed” to let them in. Officers who went to the home noted that they saw the parents place up to three masks on the children before letting them in, per El Mundo. The mother told officers to “be careful” since her children were “very sick,” the outlet reported.

Once inside, officers found the home filled with trash and a large number of medication and masks, as well as other items, which officers deemed “a clearly unsanitary situation that could put the health and safety of the minors at risk,” per El Comcercio.

Lozano reportedly dubbed the home a “house of horrors” during the press conference, while ABC reported that the children had also been living among feces since 2021.

Police also discovered that the children slept in cribs and defaced monsters and dolls were also found in their rooms, per El Mundo. The officers noted that the children did not appear to have any illnesses, but were “dirty” from being left inside the home.

“The children were in terrible shape. It was absolutely outrageous,” one agent told El Mundo. “Not malnourished, because they were fed. But they were also dirty… [and] completely cut off from reality, and not just because they didn’t go to school. When we took them out of the house, into the garden, where they wouldn’t even go outside, they saw a snail and went crazy, freaked out.”

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The three kids were taken to the National Human Rights Center for a medical evaluation and then placed into the custody of the Ministry of Welfare, who placed them in a juvenile center, according to El Comcercio. Their parents were being held in pretrial detention without bail, as of Wednesday, April 30, per ABC.

“We’ve all been affected by Covid syndrome and what the pandemic has brought, and we can speculate about what led a family to live locked up for so long,” Lozano said during the press conference, according to the outlets.

If you suspect child abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child or 1-800-422-4453, or go to www.childhelp.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.