The couple were arrested on suspicion of child cruelty and failing to comply with parental duties (Image: Getty)
A married couple who kept their three children locked up in Spain between 2021 and 2025 have been sent to prison for three years. A court has also banned them from seeing the youngsters until they are grown-ups and has refused them any sort of contact.
The so-called “House of Horrors” was discovered in Oviedo after neighbours thought there were children in the house, but they were never seen, never played in the garden and never went to school. The couple were arrested on suspicion of child cruelty and failing to comply with their duties as parents. A trial was held in Spain in March behind closed doors. A judge ruled it could not be held in public as the details would cause considerable damage to the children, who reportedly continue to suffer ill effects on their mental and physical health.
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The couple were both convicted of habitual psychological abuse within the family and sentenced to two years and four months in prison (Image: Getty)
Both parents were acquitted of the charges of unlawful detention. However, both were convicted of habitual psychological abuse within the family and sentenced to two years and four months in prison each.
In addition, they have been barred from holding public office for the duration of their sentences, prohibited from possessing firearms for four years and six months and banned from exercising parental authority, guardianship or foster care for three years and four months.
The sentence also prohibits them from approaching the minors within 980 feet (300m) of their home, school or any other place they go to for three years and four months.
The court also sentenced them to six months in prison each for abandonment of family. As compensation for the civil liability, they must pay each child €30,000 (£25,900). They are also ordered to pay two-fifths of the court costs.
The prosecution had asked for a 25-year prison sentence.
When they were rescued, the two eight-year-old twins could not read or write (Image: Getty)
The couple entered prison two days after their arrest, on April 28 2025, after the complaint from neighbours. The defendants – a 53-year-old German man and a 48-year-old woman with dual German-American nationality – were facing individual sentences totalling 25 years and four months in prison for crimes of habitual psychological violence in the family and illegal detention.
According to the Prosecutor’s Office, the parents kept their three children locked up – two eight-year-old twins and a 10-year-old boy – between December 2021 and April 2025, moved by an unfounded fear that they could catch some disease, including COVID-19.
During that time, according to the indictment, the parents failed to comply with their duties of protection and deprived the minors of their educational, health, emotional and social needs. The children remained isolated inside the house and without contact with other people, not even through the media.
The children did not know relatives or people other than their own parents and they did not go outside, not even to the garden of the house. The Prosecutor’s Office maintained that the defendants instilled in them the fear of catching any disease if they left the house.
The minors were never schooled in Spain. When they were rescued, the twins could not read or write. They also lacked health monitoring. The last visit to the doctor was in 2019, before moving to Asturias. According to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, it was the parents themselves who diagnosed and treated the children’s health problems, for which they used medicines acquired without a prescription that were found in the house.
The house was in poor hygienic condition, with large amounts of rubbish and dirt (Image: Getty)
The minors also had various physical consequences derived from the conditions in which they lived. They had problems with toilet control due to prolonged use of diapers, walked hunched over and bowed, had difficulty going up and down stairs and suffered from skin irritations. The house, according to the investigation, was in poor hygienic condition, with large amounts of rubbish and dirt.
The Prosecutor’s Office maintained that the children suffered from social dystocia, which implies a delay in their incorporation into the social relationships appropriate to their age. The Public Prosecutor accused both parents of habitual psychological violence in the family and of three crimes of illegal detention with the aggravating circumstance of kinship.
Following the arrest of the parents, the children were placed in the care of the Principality’s protection system. Their maternal grandparents, of American nationality, came to visit them in the centre where they are sheltered, and the Asturian Government initially considered taking them in, a possibility that ultimately did not materialise, according to the Spanish press.
The children’s parents insisted they had always acted in the youngsters’ interests, and their defence lawyers said the boys had never been unlawfully detained. Describing the situation they were in, they said it was a voluntary isolation from the world by parents who had taken a series of probably wrong but not criminal decisions.
They also said the couple had caught COVID and decided to educate the children at home.
