Parents Starved And Tortured Children By Locking Them In Attic For Two Years

Three adults have been arrested in connection to a horrifying case of child abuse in which three children were subjected to cruel and unusual torment.

Two boys and one girl were finally rescued by police after the eldest managed to escape.

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The father, 32-year-old Todd Richter along with his fiancé Jennifer Yost and their biological mother Wendy Yost, 51, were charged with child abuse.

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The boy that escaped managed to tell a stranger that his siblings were being held in the attic.

When police arrived, they found the children covered in bruises and cuts.

Medical examination revealed that the children had also been starved for at least a week and were regularly beaten with bats, belts and wine bottles.

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They were also held underwater in the bathtub and pushed downstairs.

They would also aggravate the family cat and then set it on the children's stomachs in order to have it scratch at them.

The children revealed that they would fill an old peanut butter jar with water in order to drink and were often given scraps of mouldy food to eat.

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When police arrived, they found the attic filled with containers of urine and fecal matter.

The door of the attic had been blocked with a bedframe to prevent them from escaping.

Another child in the house, a 4-year-old girl had not been subjected to the same abuse and lived in a separate bedroom away from the three victims.

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Police officers said that the case had a profound impact on them and would haunt them.

'We've had certainly cases of child abuse, child sexual exploitation and things like that, but that these children endured this many years of this kind of treatment is beyond anything that I've seen,'

'The only plus to it is that the children are now safe and getting treatment and won't be put back in that environment.'

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Al four children have been removed from the toxic environment and placed into the custody of child protective services.

All three adults have been denied bail and are soon to face court.