American teenagers escape after two years held captive

Described by US media as a “house of horrors”, police are investigating a home in Arizona where three teenage girls were imprisoned for two years and abused by their mother and stepfather.

The three girls, aged 17, 13 and 12, were locked in their bedrooms, subjected to torture and fed only once a day. Described as malnourished and “extremely filthy” by police, they had not taken a bath for around four to six months, they told officers. They were forced to listen to intolerably loud music or white noise and were only allowed to go to the toilet if they had permission, which was not always granted. In order not to raise suspicion, their bedrooms and the whole house had been sound-proofed.

The girls escaped the house when the 12- and 13-year-old broke out of their bedroom window early on Tuesday morning and ran to a neighbour’s home.

“We heard our doorbell ringing wildly and frantically and heard somebody knocking on our windows,” one of the neighbours, who gave her name as Alice, told NBC news.

“Hysterical”

The girls, who Alice described as “distraught and hysterical”, said they had run away from home because their stepfather had kicked in their bedroom door and was trying to assault them with a knife.

Alice, who had no idea children had been living next door, took the girls in and called the police.

When police entered the house they discovered a third sister, who had not been aware of the officers' arrival because of the loud music.

“[When law enforcement officers entered the house they] discovered yet a third female, who was also imprisoned within her bedroom, a different bedroom than the one her siblings were occupying together,” Mike Gillooly, a captain with the Tucson police department, told reporters on Tuesday.

Stepfather Fernando Richter, 34, and mother, Sophia Richter, 32, were arrested and have been charged with multiple counts of emotional and physical child abuse and kidnapping. The stepfather is also charged with one count of sexual abuse of one of the younger girls.

- France24.com