Homeschooling’s 

Invisible Children

Jeanette Marie Maples

Jeannette Marie Maples was 16 when paramedics arrived at her home to find her dead. A Department of Human Services worker described the girl’s death as “horrific” and her mother, Angela Darlene McAnulty, and stepfather, Richard Anthony, were both subsequently charged with aggravated murder. Jeannette had attended school until she graduated from 8th grade in June 2008. Her […]

Raijon Daniels

8 year old Raijon Daniels was unresponsive in his bedroom when police and paramedics reached him, his body covered with chemical and rope burns, sores, and other injuries. The vomit around his mouth suggested that he may have died from swallowing household cleaner or another poison. Raijon’s school had become suspicious when his mother, Teresa […]

Child of Kathryn and Kenneth Kreier

Kathryn Kreier punished her 14 year old adopted daughter by depriving her of food, forcing her to sleep outside naked, and fracturing her fingers. Her husband Kenneth Kreier, the girl’s biological father, did nothing to stop the abuse. The abuse took place between September 2007 and December 2008, during which the girl’s weight fell from […]

2 Children of Keith and Susan Ludwig

Investigators responding to an anonymous tip in 1997 found that Keith and Susan Ludwig forced their two daughters, aged 13 and 15, to sleep in make-shift cages with a brick-and-string alarm system and whipped them with leather straps, sticks, and rubber hoses. Authorities had investigated the Florida couple for child abuse in 1993, but while […]

Katelyn Colbie Pendleton

In 2006, when Katelyn Colbie Pendleton was 9, her mother, Velma Hare, gave her away to a friend, Kizza Monika Lopez. Lopez soon began intermittently starving and force feeding the girl, and having her sleep in a closet. Lopez whipped Katelyn with plastic coat hangers, threw scalding water at her while she was in the […]

3 Children of Leslie Tiesler and Brad Thill

Leslie Tiesler is accused of starving three adopted sons, aged 13 and 14, shooting them with a BB gun, beating them with a spoon, and confining them to a tool chest for days. The other two children in the home, one biological, were not abused. Leslie’s ex-husband, Brad Thills, adopted the four children in 2008, […]

2 Children of David and Glenda Kinghorn

David and Glenda Kinghorn had 2 biological children and four adopted children, and took in as many as 8 additional children from disrupted adoptions. David was charged and convicted of raping one of these children, a girl aged 13. There were also allegations that the Kinghorns punched a 10 year old boy, Sasha Bignell (one […]

5 Children of John and Linda Dollar

John and Linda Dollar are accused of abusing their 5 adopted children, ages 12, 13, 14, 14, and 16, by branding them with a cattle prod, striking their feet with hammers, pulling out their toenails with pliers, and binding them with chains. The Dollars also deprived the children of food to the extent that the […]

Zahra Baker

Zahra Baker, a ten year old cancer survivor and amputee living in North Carolina, was reported missing in October 2010. When allegations of child abuse had surfaced the previous year, her parents had withdrawn her from public school at the end of the term, telling officials that they were going to homeschool her. They never […]

2 Children of Dwayne and Pamela Hardy

Investigators responding to an anonymous tip found two children, aged 6 and 9, malnourished and scarred from beatings. Dwayne and Pamela Hardy had adopted the two children six months earlier, and homeschooled the two just as they had their four biological children, who were now grown. The couple “disciplined” the children by frequently depriving them […]