Two young Wisconsin boys broke free from the house where they had been locked up for years, leading to charges against their mother and her boyfriend.
Katie Koch, 34, the mother of the children, and her boyfriend, Joel Manke, 38, are facing felony charges over their treatment of Koch’s two sons, ages 7 and 9, according to a report from ABC 7.
According to a criminal complaint, a neighbor first saw the children when they were looking through a shattered window last week, right before they climbed out onto an air conditioner, jumped down into the yard and then walked down the street naked and bloody.
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A child who witnessed the boys outside described them as “acting like cavemen, like they had never seen the sun before.”
Another witness, who lives across the street from the Milwaukee-area home where the boys lived, told ABC 7 that it looked like the boys “had never been outside before. If they have been, it’s been a very long time.”
The witness, Christine Eder, said that she had to take a moment to process what she was seeing but then called 911 while she kept an eye on the boys’ movements.
“They were just walking different,” Eder said. “Their hair looked like it had never been brushed, never been cut. They didn’t know the outside existed.”
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According to Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Mallory Davis, the house where the boys lived was like something out of a horror movie. Police who investigated the scene said much of the house was piled high with garbage and that the smell of feces was everywhere in the home. The boys’ room was able to be locked from the outside and inside while the walls were smeared with feces.
Davis said the boys were locked in their room for most of their lives with the windows boarded up, and officers described the scene as “a terrible hoarding situation,” noting that they could not see the floor of the home.
According to police, Koch told officers that the boys had broken a window and ran away. She said she had lived in the home with Manke, who has owned it since 2007, for about four years. Koch also told investigators that she homeschooled the boys and “admitted that the home is not habitable” and that “her boys deserve better.”
Meanwhile, Manke told police that he knew the conditions the children were living in was wrong but that he had to “pick his battles” with Koch in an attempt to avoid arguments. He also told investigators that Koch had never taken the boys to the doctor since she lived with him nor had they been to school.
The boys were taken into protective custody after Koch and Manke were arrested, with Davis saying their heads had to be shaved because they were covered in feces.
“These children have been horribly damaged from their mother’s actions,” Davis said. “They are completely uneducated. They are not potty-trained, even at their ages. They are, essentially at this point, unable to function in society.”
Koch faces four felony counts and two misdemeanors for child neglect and false imprisonment. Manke also faces four felony counts. If both are convicted on all felony counts, they face fines of up to $120,000 and 43.5 years in prison. Koch faces an additional $20,000 in fines and 18 months in prison related to the misdemeanor counts.
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