Many of us look back on life just a few short years ago and the thing that stands out more than anything is the COVID shutdown. It was a time that was difficult for all of us, but some people have not yet moved on.
This includes one German couple living in Spain who are now under arrest after locking their three children inside a home. For the past four years, they have been observing pandemic restrictions, including wearing masks and they forced their children to do the same.
Eight-year-old twins and a 10-year-old, siblings, were rescued from the ‘house of horrors’ on April 28. It occurred in Oviedo, and it was the first time that the children had been out of the house since December 2021.
After being freed from the home, police noticed that the children were acting strange after being outside. They seemed to be overly focused on a snail and were touching the grass.
One investigator said: “As soon as we got them out, all three children began to breathe deeply, as if they had never been outside before.”
The plight of the children was reported to authorities by a neighbor on April 14. The complaint was filed saying that the young children had not been going to school.
Javier Lozano, the Oviedo police chief said that at first, there was nothing that raised a lot of concern. After police were surveilling the home, however, they found that the 53-year-old father was the only one to leave and only to get the mail and groceries.
Neighbors reported that the rest of the family had been living in the home without leaving since December 2021.
The father did agree to allow them in when the police approached the family. They saw the 48-year-old mother putting the three children in masks at the time.
She also told the police to ‘be careful’ since the siblings were ‘very sick’
When they got into the home, they found that it was littered with garbage and a lot of medication and masks. It was obvious that it was an unsanitary situation.
Despite the children’s age, they were sleeping in cribs and had ‘defaced monsters and dolls’. They also were not suffering from any illnesses according to reports.
Lozano called the scene a ‘house of horrors’ and said: “The children were in terrible shape. It was absolutely outrageous. 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.”
He then added: “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.”
The parents are being held in pretrial detention without bail and the children were transported to a juvenile center. It was reported that the couple had ‘COVID syndrome’ and they were arrested.
The charges included suspicion of domestic violence, habitual psychological abuse, and child abandonment.
Lozano said: “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.”