This is the incredible moment children held prisoner in a Spanish ‘house of horrors’ saw sunlight for the first time in nearly four years following a police rescue.
Police in the northern city of Oviedo found three young boys between the ages of eight and ten in the house on Wednesday, having apparently been there since 2021.
Investigators were concerned the children seemed unsteady as they walked outside for the first time in years – almost half the length of their lives.
In an emotional moment, they began hyperventilating and threw themselves onto the lawn to stroke the grass, Bild reports.
‘When we took them out of the house, into the garden, where they didn’t even want to go outside, they saw a snail and went crazy,’ one officer told El Mundo. ‘They were scared.’
‘We have given three children back their lives,’ said Chief Inspector Francisco Javier Lozano after the raid.
Police in Oviedo visited the property on Monday, during the Spanish blackouts, and were horrified by the conditions the children were living in, DW reports.
It is understood the family closed off to the world during the Covid-19 pandemic, forbidding the children from going outside, and making them sleep in caged beds.
Police had previously ignored a tip from a neighbour, who raised concerns they had never seen the children go to school, DW reports.
The parents, a 48-year-old woman with German-American citizenship and a 53-year-old German man, were arrested and the children placed in care.
Two of the children are lead from the house in Spain after police intervened on Wednesday
Spanish police said the house was in a disgusting state, with hoards of rubbish and mountains of accumulated medicines
Spanish police said the house was in a disgusting state, with hoards of rubbish and mountains of accumulated ADHD medicines.
Surfaces were covered in filthy pet excrement and the family also had a cat with a massive tumour.
The children, two eight-year-old twin boys and their ten-year-old brother, were found wearing nappies and discovered they were forced to sleep in caged beds during their ordeal.
‘At first, there was nothing particularly striking,’ Lozano said. But the parents started behaving strangely when they asked to come in.
When they were allegedly allowed to enter the property, they noted that the parents put ‘up to three masks on the children’ before letting them in, El Mundo reports.
The mother told the officers to be careful as her children were very sick.
The three young boys were freed having apparently lived solely in the house since December 2021, during the pandemic.
The motivation of the parents for keeping the children locked in their own home is not yet known.
Investigators speaking to El Comercio suggested that the parents suffered from ‘Covid syndrome’ and lived in fear of the virus.
Officers said the children did not appear sick, but were ‘dirty’.
‘The children were in a deplorable state,’ one officer told El Mundo.
‘They weren’t malnourished, because they were fed. But they were also dirty and completely disconnected from reality…’
Spanish police said the house was in a disgusting state, with hoards of rubbish and mountains of accumulated medicines. A bathroom appeared to be used for a sick cat
Terrifying drawings by the children on a caged bed. The children were aged 8 to 10
The German-American mother, 48, reportedly told police that she and her German husband, 58, thought it was the best way to keep them safe.
Inside the house, police found a large supply of medicine and face masks.
In shocking scenes, the children were kept out of school and forbidden to leave the house.
Doors were locked and the windows were permanently closed. The children were not even allowed to go into the garden.
Police said when the children were freed, one of them knelt on the grass and ‘touched it with amazement’.
Over the years, the children were kept so hidden that even neighbours did not realise they were in the house.
The husband and wife duo are now being held in custody without bail pending further investigations following the discovery of the children.
The operation and investigation into the children began on April 14 after a resident of the area raised the alarm.
The woman had heard voices that sounded like children coming from the house although she had never seen anyone leave the home to play or go to school.
But, after several days of surveillance, the investigators were clear that more than one person had to live there.
This was indicated by the movements that could be sensed through the few windows that were not closed, and the number of boxes of food orders that the man brought into the home.
After deciding to storm the property, agents could not believe what they found when they entered the house.
The minors were barefoot, wearing diapers and still sleeping in cribs. When they wanted to take them out of the building, they did not even have shoes of their size, since they had not been bought shoes for years.
The chief commissioner of the Local Police of Oviedo, Francisco Javier Lozano, gave a press conference on Wednesday in which he explained the details of the operation that saw the arrest of the couple at 2.45pm on Monday.
A German couple who had been living cut off from the world kept their children sequestered for more than three years in Spain
At the moment, the reasons that led this family to live in captivity since 2021 and in unsanitary conditions inside the Asturian villa are unknown
The initial search of the house was made more difficult because Spain had been plunged into darkness by an electricity outrage.
When police knocked on the front door, the father answered but asked the officers to wait for a few minutes so the children could put their masks on.
One officer told the Spanish press: ‘They were very scared and around the mother, who told us all the time that the little ones had serious pathologies and that we should not approach them.
‘They had three masks each on top of each other. They were oblivious to any contact with reality.’
At the moment, the reasons that led this family to live in captivity since 2021 and in unsanitary conditions inside the Asturian villa are unknown.
The children spoke mostly in English. After being evaluated at the Central University Hospital of Asturias, they have been placed under the guardianship of the Government of the Principality.
It is not ruled out that their parents will be charged with crimes of habitual abuse, abandonment of minors, and against fundamental rights.
As a summary of the operation, the chief commissioner of the Local Police of Oviedo, Francisco Javier López Lozano said: ‘We have dismantled the house of horrors’.
