A couple in rural Washington face charges of criminal mistreatment and assault after allegedly starving their five adopted children to near-fatal levels.
Jeffrey and Rebecca Trebilcock, both 44, were arrested after a two-month investigation found their adopted children neglected and malnourished, including a 13-year-old boy who was 4ft 4in and weighed just 49lb.
A doctor examining the boy in 2008 said he had weight and height levels of a six-year-old, and that he suffered severe malnutrition, hypothermia, a slow heart rate, wasting muscles – and four broken ribs in various stages of repair.
The adopted children told investigators that the couple wired their kitchen so that an alarm sounded if someone tried to ‘steal’ food.
Punishments for doing so allegedly ranged from being doused with water and made to stand outside, to being beaten with a wooden board.
Chief Deputy Charlie Rosenzweig, of the Cowlitz County Sheriff’s Office, said the couple’s adopted son recounted a story about one beating that ended with him feeling blood running down the back of his leg.
To avoid punishment, the children resorted to stealing dog food and goat food from the family pets, and eating the leaves of plants.
Now that they were in protective custody, the boy had gained 25lb and had also grown taller. The rest of the adopted children, all girls between the ages of 10 and 13 (one of the girls’ age has not been released), had also gained weight.
The Trebilcocks, of Reid Lane in Longview, appeared in Cowlitz County Superior Court on Friday. They managed to post the $50,000 bail, and would be arrained on May 31. The judge ordered that they stay away from their adopted children in that time.
Lead prosecutor Susan Baur said: ‘Food is such an intimate and integral part of us. To actually use it as a tool or a mechanism of power is unusual.’
