Parents jailed for isolating their children in Spanish ‘house of horrors’ are freed after winning appeal

Child welfare

German man and American-born wife had their psychological violence convictions overturned but remain convicted of family abandonment as they begin a fight to regain custody of their kids

Natalia Penza

The parents of three children rescued from a four-year Covid ‘lockdown’ in a so-called Spanish “House of Horrors” have been released from prison after winning a major appeal victory.

A German freelance tech recruiter aged 53, and his American-born wife, 48, were warned they could face jail sentences of more than 25 years each when they went on trial in March.

But yesterday they learnt they had been acquitted on appeal of the most serious charge they were convicted of following their behind-closed-doors trial in the northern Spanish city of Oviedo.

And today sources close to the case said they had already been freed from prison and would now be focusing on trying to regain custody of their kids.

The man's defence lawyer said after being told the appeal verdict: “They are happy, but they have received a lot of criticism.

“They had already expected a ruling like this beforehand, so the first feeling was relief, but the next was great concern about how they are going to regain contact with and custody of their children."

The German and his wife were found guilty of a crime of “habitual psychological violence within the family environment” in May and handed a two-year four-month prison sentence each.

The pair were also convicted of a crime of family abandonment and given a separate six-month prison sentence.

Yesterday they learnt they had been acquitted of the more serious offence on appeal, although the Asturias High Court of Justice upheld the jail term for the family abandonment crime.

They have already served more than six months behind bars with remand time included.

And around lunchtime today, hours after officials confirmed a provincial court in Oviedo was preparing to order prison chiefs to release them, a well-placed source said: “My understanding is they have already been released.”

Public prosecutors have been offered the option of appealing the latest court decision. It was not clear today if they would exercise that right.

The appeal judges concluded the couple did not intend to inflict degrading or humiliating treatment on their children, accepting the extreme isolation they were subjected to stemmed from "misguided overprotection” initially caused by fear of Covid infection.

They said the couple imposed the same living conditions on themselves without using physical violence against their kids, two twins aged eight when they were discovered and their 10-year-old brother who are now all a year older.

The appeal judges upheld the lesser charge against them saying they had committed a “flagrant and unjustified breach” of the duties inherent in parental responsibility, and seriously deprived their children of the right to education and the need to socialise with others.

The plight of the youngsters came to light following their parents’ arrests in April last year at the rented family villa in an affluent neighbourhood of Oviedo at the foot of Mount Naranco.

The father, a Hamburg University philosophy graduate, was the only registered occupant of the property he and his naturalised German wife had started renting at the end of 2021.

They has left Germany amid reports they emigrated when they were refused permission to school the kids at home following the Covid crisis.

The pair were held in an Asturias prison between the time of their arrests and their trial which started on March 10 at Oviedo’s Audiencia Provincial Court and their children remain in local authority care.

Prosecutors said ahead of the trial in their indictment, outlining how the kids lived between December 2021 when they arrived in Spain and April 28 2025 when their nightmare ended: “The accused, by mutual agreement, failed to fulfil their duty of care they had towards their children and deprived them of their educational, health, emotional and social needs.

“They locked the minors up inside their home and isolated them completely from the rest of the world, denying them contact with other people both psychically and through other forms of communication.

“The children didn’t even know their relatives or any other people that weren’t their parents.

“They never went outside, not even to the garden of their home, for almost four years because of the unfounded fear the accused had, and they had instilled in their children, that they might be infected with something.

“The accused never enrolled their children in school in Spain and (the children) learned by themselves or with the help of their parents, with the result that the younger children, aged eight when they were found, didn’t know how to read or write.

“Furthermore, the children did not receive any health monitoring: the last time they saw a doctor was in 2019, and it was the defendants who were responsible for diagnosing and treating their problems when they arose.

“They had a large supply of medicines at home, purchased without the required medical prescription. Furthermore, the children also had problems with bladder and bowel control, caused by the prolonged and improper use of nappies.

“The home was in poor condition, with a significant lack of cleanliness and large amounts of rubbish and dirt accumulated in various rooms.

“In addition, the furniture was inadequate to meet the children's needs: the twins slept in cots, the bars of which they had broken so they could get in and out freely.

“Their brother slept in a bed that was too small for his age. The children walked hunched over, with bowed legs, had difficulty going up and down stairs, and had irritated skin and onychomycosis.

“One of them had a slight stoop. When they went outside, once their situation had been discovered, the children were surprised by their surroundings.

“As a result of these events, the children suffer from social dystocia, which will delay their incorporation into social relationships appropriate for their age.”

Judges made the rare decision to keep out the press and public at the trial, which finished on March 20, because of the seriousness of the allegations being prosecuted and the “unfavourable consequences” it could have for the couple’s kids.

The couple were disqualified from exercising parental authority for three years and four months and banned from going within 300 metres of their children as well as being ordered to pay each of the three youngsters 30,000 euros in compensation in the sentence stemming from their March trial.

After their arrests, the youngsters’ saviour was identified as a university professor called Silvia who handed in a ‘forensic detective’s’ diary with evidence minors were inside the large villa.

Silvia reportedly started chronicling the evidence that sparked a police watch on the property the same day she handed in her dossier after observing what she initially mistook for a little girl playing in the garden around 65 feet from one of her windows.

They included details of the days and times curtains on the second floor moved or blinds were opened or lowered as the bespectacled man she only ever saw leaving the house with a face mask on briefly went to the front gate to meet delivery drivers bringing supermarket purchases or takeaway food.

Her suspicions grew when she saw the amount of supermarket deliveries he received and she began to hear what she believed to be children’s voices.

Police discovered the purchases included nappies when they started working on Silvia’s dossier, sparking a decision to enter the property and see what was going on inside.

Police have said that when they were freed, one of the children knelt on the grass and “touched it with amazement.”

The children were placed in regional social service care after their parents’ arrests.

Their maternal grandparents were tracked down to the States and ended up visiting them in the centre where they were being looked after, but have now returned to America.

Regional Social Rights and Welfare Minister Marta del Arco said recently: “These are children whose trauma from what they experienced was bound to surface later on, and both educators and psychologists are working very intensively with them because they really need it.”

The children’s parents insisted during their trial they had always acted in the interest of the youngsters.

Their defence lawyers insisted the kids had never been unlawfully detained, describing the situation they were in as a “voluntary isolation” from the world by parents who had taken a series of “probably wrong but not criminal decisions”