Homeschooling’s 

Invisible Children

3 Children of Fernando and Sophia Richter

Two girls, ages 12 and 13, escaped through a window in their room and ran to alert a neighbor to their plight after their stepfather threatened them with a knife. Police found a third girl, aged 17, locked in a separate bedroom. The girls’ mother reported that they were being homeschooled. All three girls were […]

1 Child of Rene Tibucio Valenzuela

A 14-year-old girl was physically and sexually abused by her father, Rene Tibucio Valenzuela, and locked in a small, dark empty bedroom for 15 months. The girl was only let out of the room for brief bathroom and meal breaks, and was occasionally allowed to shower. The girl escaped in 2005 by kicking in the bedroom […]

3 Grandchildren of John Pierre Baker and Betty Jo Miller

In 1997, two children, a boy and a girl, clawed a hole in the room of their trailer home prison and escaped into the Arizona desert. Their story began ten years before, when their mother went to prison for theft and forgery and they were placed in the custody of their grandfather, John Pierre Baker. […]

Ame Deal

10 year old Ame Deal died of suffocation after being locked in a footlocker overnight as punishment for stealing a popsicle. Ame’s grandparents, with whom she lived, frequently locked her in the footlocker as a punishment and sometimes threw it around with her inside. Some time before her death, Ame’s aunt had thrown her in […]

Child of Tammy Renea Andrews

Tammy Renea Andrews allegedly tortured her 10 year old adopted son, whom she homeschooled while sending her biological children to school. Andrews is charged with routinely tying the boy up or chaining him, denying him food, and beating him with a baseball bat and a hammer. She also allegedly pinched his tongue with a staple […]

Child of Scott and Andrea Bass

A 14 year old homeschooled girl in Arizona was held captive for two months in a homemade dungeon by her father, Scott Bass, and stepmother, Andrea Bass, as punishment for stealing food. The dungeon was a bathroom without working plumbing, and the girl was fed sporadically and forced to exercise daily, under threat of being […]