Inside 'house of horrors' where parents kept children in self-imposed 'Covid lockdown' since 2021
2 May 2025, 11:05 | Updated: 2 May 2025, 12:03
Three children held captive in a “house of horrors” since the COVID-19 pandemic have been rescued by police.
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A German couple have been arrested over alleged child abuse after Spanish police found the three children trapped inside a home having apparently been kept in there since 2021.
Three boys were recovered during the raid on the Oviedo home, which police described as a “house of horrors.”
The three children, two eight-year-olds and a ten-year-old, were found in horrific conditions, wearing masks, nappies and allegedly forced to sleep in cages.
The house reportedly was filled with rubbish, animal faeces, and old medicines.
All the doors and windows on the house and been locked tight, with the children so well hidden that neighbours didn’t even know they existed.
This was until one local heard voices that sounded like children coming from the home, despite never seeing any go to school or leave the building.
Upon entering the home, police found the children barefoot, sleeping in caged cribs.
When leaving the house, one of the children fell to the ground and touched the grass “in amazement”, one officer said.
Speaking in a press conference following the parents’ arrest, the chief commissioner of the Local Police of Oviedo, Francisco Javier, said: "We have dismantled the house of horrors".
One police officer told the Spanish media: "They were very scared and around the mother, who told us all the time that the little ones had serious pathologies and that we should not approach them.
"They had three masks each on top of each other. They were oblivious to any contact with reality."
Both parents, a German male and an American female, remain in custody.
