An Anaheim couple was arraigned in Fullerton today for keeping two female relatives “malnourished and locked inside [their] unsanitary mobile home without letting them go outside,” according to prosecutors.
The Orange County District Attorney's office (OCDA) does not identify minor crime victims but given the girls are 5 and 10–and Lester Louis Huffmire and his wife Petra Huffmire “are accused of having a duty of care to the victims”–you can figure out their relationship to the couple.
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The 41-year-olds are accused of living in an unsanitary and uninhabitable mobile home with the girls between May 21, 2010, and May 20, 2013. Kitchen appliances were covered in mold and cobwebs, stacks of trash, debris, mold, and feces were throughout the home, a pile of used condoms were under a stuffed teddy bear and toilets did not work, according to the OCDA.
The unemployed couple are alleged to have played World of Warcraft all day while forbidding the girls from attending school or leaving the filth pit for any reason.
A call to police from a neighbor is credited with ending the nightmare. A welfare check determined the girls had dirt crusted on their feet, matted hair and teeth damaged beyond repair, claims the OCDA, adding both were malnourished.
The Huffmires are each charged with two felony counts of child abuse, two misdemeanor counts of false imprisonment, and a sentencing enhancement for great bodily injury.
Held on $100,000 bail each, they could get seven years and four months in state prison with convictions–although, from the sound of it, that would represent a housing upgrade.
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OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.