Homeschooling’s 

Invisible Children

Child of Ernest and Cynthia Davison

Officials responding to a child neglect tip found a 5 year old adopted girl weighing only 21 pounds. Her body showed signs of having been restrained for long periods of time. She and her three siblings, all of whom were adopted and had special needs, were removed from their adoptive parents home and placed in […]

Child of Sabrina Smith and Amanda Wills

A 6 year old girl was hospitalized weighing only 18 pounds. She was unresponsive at the time. She had been systematically starved by her mother, Sabrina Smith, 41, and her guardian, Amanda Wills, 30. While she was initially in critical condition, the girl ultimately recovered. In addition to being severely malnourished, her body was covered […]

Child of Dendra Patrick and Reginald Carr

A 12 year old boy was brutally abused at the hands of his mother, Dendra Patrick, 43, and her boyfriend, Reginald Carr, 42. When the police arrived after a tip from a neighbor, they found the boy laying on the floor, his skull fractured and nose broken, surrounded by feces and dried blood. Carr had […]

3 Children in Liberty County, Texas

An 8 year old boy was found locked inside an abandoned church, with only a paint can and a roll of toilet paper, after neighbors told Child Protective Services that the boy’s mother often left the child there. The mother, who told investigators that the boys were homeschooled, regularly isolated the boy and his brothers, […]

Child of Mona and Russell Hauer

Mona and Russell Hauer starved their 8 year old adopted son, leaving him barely alive. The boy was the size of a 4 year old, his bones protruding and his abdomen distended. His parents routinely beat him with a broom handle and forced him to sleep in an unfinished basement with a bucket to urinate […]

Child of Chad Chritton and Melinda Drabek-Chritton

A  severely malnourished 15 year old girl was found wandering barefoot on the side of a road in the middle of a Wisconsin winter, crying, after escaping the basement dungeon where she had been confined for the past six years by her father, Chad Chritton, and stepmother, Melinda Drabek-Chritton. The girl had been pulled from […]

Child of Amanda Joliff

A 14 year old Colorado boy was kept padlocked in a small room with no light and boarded up windows by his mother, Amanda Joliff, for all but a few hours a day. The teen was allowed one meal a day, if that, which came to a total of about four meals a week. The […]

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 […]

Calista Springer

Calista Springer was sixteen when she died when a fire swept through her family’s Michigan house and she was unable to free herself from her collar. Removed from school to be homeschooled three years earlier after teachers had become to make child abuse reports, Calista, who was adopted, spent her days chained to her bed […]

3 Children of John and Sonja Kluth

John Edward Kluth and Sonja Kay Kluth beat, choked, whipped, and burned their three adopted children, two boys aged 15 and 11, and a 9 year old girl. The Kluths also forced the children to eat pet food, kept the boys padlocked in a storm shelter with a bucket to urinate in each night for […]