The Provincial Court in Oviedo has sentenced a German expatriate couple to a total of two years and ten months in prison. The parents, a 54-year-old man and a 49-year-old woman, were found guilty of psychological violence and neglect of their three children. However, the more serious charge of deprivation of liberty was dropped, according to the judiciary in the northern Spanish region of Asturias.
The prosecution had originally sought a prison sentence of 25 years and four months for each parent. Javier Muñoz, the lawyer for the mother, expressed moderate satisfaction after the verdict, as the court dismissed the charges of deprivation of liberty. He emphasized that the case should have been treated more as a social and welfare issue.
The parents had kept their children, two eight-year-old twins and a ten-year-old boy, locked in a neglected house in Oviedo for three and a half years. They claimed they did this to protect their children from illnesses like COVID-19. The children were freed at the end of April 2025 after a neighbor alerted the police.
During the operation, officers found the children in a concerning state. They were dirty, malnourished, and living in a house littered with garbage. Operation leader Javier Lozano reported that the children were forced to wear diapers and face masks and were completely isolated from the outside world.
