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21st Feb 2018

Man and woman arrested after their children were found locked in their house

Laura Holland

A woman and a man in America have been arrested after they were found to be keeping their children locked in their home without water or food.

The accused, Benito and Carol Gutierrez, are in police custody in Arizona after one of the children escaped from the house and alerted the authorities.

The couple had their four adopted children, aged between 6 and 12, locked in separate rooms in the house without access to food or water and without a proper working toilet available to them.

This story has been likened to the recent case of an American couple, Louise and David Turpin, who were found to have their thirteen children held captive in their house. Their conditions were even more extreme where the couple had the children tied to beds.

Police were alerted to the situation when one of the children, a 17-year-old girl, escaped and called for help. She managed to leave the house on Sunday morning and called the police using a mobile phone she had taken from home.

She was so malnourished that the Police believed she was just 10 years old.

When Police arrived to the house of David Allen Turpin, 57, and Louise Anna Turpin, 49, they found 12 other children in appalling conditions, with some chained to beds. They reported ‘foul-smelling’ conditions where the children were being kept.

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