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A Florida children's author and her husband pleaded guilty to abusing and neglecting their three children, with one girl ending up hospitalised in critical condition due to multiple organ failures.
According to local news reports, she was 8 years old and weighed only 40 pounds. The children were beaten with an instrument called a "whacker," confined, and prohibited from speaking to one another.
Jennifer Wolfthal, 45, a children's book author known for A Real Friend, and her husband, 43-year-old Joseph Wolfthal, an engineer at Lockheed Martin, both pleaded guilty earlier this week to three counts each of child abuse and child neglect, according to court documents reviewed by USA Today.
One of the children described a life in which she was isolated from everyone, including her siblings, spending almost all of her time locked alone in her bedroom, according to a search warrant written by Seminole County Sheriff's Deputy Sean R. Platter. Two of the children also reported being sent to bed as punishment, with cold water poured over them and left to sleep in that condition overnight.
As part of their punishments, the children were forced to write sentences, investigators learned. A search of the home revealed over 1,100 paragraphs repeating: "My body stays flat on the bed at all times. I was never given permission to move or say anything. Now I get to write about this along with everything else. I'm a fool."
The couple was arrested in 2021 after their 8-year-old daughter was hospitalised. In addition to multiple organ failure, she was diagnosed with sepsis, a staph infection, black eyes, open wounds, scabs, pneumonia, and malnutrition, records show.
The other children were also hospitalized for malnutrition and bruises after a welfare check at the couple's home in Casselberry, Florida. The children had been adopted, according to arrest reports.
Platter's reports noted that the children were too afraid to leave their rooms at night to use the bathroom, leading to accidents. One child claimed she had not been bathed in months and was only fed a mixture of cereal and vegetable puree, often not having her first meal until late afternoon.