A MARRIED couple accused of keeping their three children locked inside their home for almost four years have said the minors were not illegally detained but instead voluntarily isolated in fear of catching Covid-19.
The parents were arrested by local police last year after two eight-year-old twins and another child aged ten were discovered in poor sanitary conditions in the family’s detached house in northern Spain.
The father, a 53-year-old German, and the mother, a 48-year-old American who also holds German nationality, were accused by investigators of locking the children up at their home in Oviedo, Asturias since 2021 against their will.
But the couple’s defence lawyer said the situation was symptomatic of ‘a family with dysfunctional behaviour’, rather than criminality.
Speaking to reporters ahead of the second and final session of the trial at Oviedo’s provincial court earlier this week, Javier Muñoz rejected what he slammed as the ‘stigmatising label’ of ‘the House of Horrors’ used by the media to describe the case.
“What we have here is a family with dysfunctional behaviour, with abnormal conduct, but certainly not criminal behaviour,” he said.
He said there was no illegal detention of the children as they were free to move around inside the home, adding that the situation was caused by an ‘insurmountable and irrational fear after having been ill for quite some time’.
“It is an extraordinary, abnormal and strange situation, but not one that constitutes a crime. Having a messy house is not a crime, and not enrolling children in an official school is not a crime – it may be an administrative offence and may be reproachable from a personal or social standpoint, but not a legal one,” the lawyer said.
Prosecutors are requesting prison sentences of 25 years and four months for habitual psychological abuse within the family, illegal detention and family abandonment.
They say the parents locked their children up until April 2025 because of an ‘unfounded fear of a hypothetical infection’.
During that time, the children were not sent to school and did not receive medical supervision.
The children were discovered after a neighbour reported seeing children living in the house, including hearing voices, although they were never spotted in the garden.
That led to a period of surveillance during which suspicions only increased thanks to the large volume of food deliveries sent to the house, even though just one person was registered as living there.
Police then entered the home to discover three children.
“They were very frightened and gathered around their mother, who kept telling us that the children had serious illnesses and that we should not approach them,” one of the police officers involved told newspaper La Nueva España.
“Each of them was wearing three masks, one on top of the other. They were completely disconnected from reality. One of them touched the grass with their hands, surprised. As soon as we took them outside, all three began breathing deeply as if they had never been outdoors before.”
The chief commissioner of Oviedo’s local police force, Francisco Javier Lozano, said: “We have dismantled the house of horrors.”
The two twins and older brother are now under the care of the Asturias regional government.
Click here to read more Spain News from The Olive Press.
