Raashanai Coley, age 11 (left), was starved and beaten to death by her mother, Nicholette Lawrence (right). Her stepfather Robert Lawrence, who lived in the home, has not been charged. Raashanai was homeschooled and, according to some reports, autistic. Her two younger half-siblings attended school and were apparently not abused.

Around the time of Raashanai’s 2003 birth in Oregon, Nicholette Lawrence lost custody of her first child, a boy, and pleaded guilty to transporting an underage girl across state lines to engage in prostitution. After child services began investigating Lawrence for exposing Raashanai to her adult business, Lawrence signed over guardianship of Raashanai to her own father and stepmother. Lawrence reclaimed her daughter in 2007 when she moved to Texas with her new husband Robert Lawrence; the family moved to Illinois shortly thereafter. In August 2011 Robert Lawrence was charged with battering Raashanai but he continued to live in the home. In June 2012 Raashanai was withdrawn from school to be homeschooled. The family’s neighbors did not know that Raashanai was living in the home, although they frequently saw her siblings.

Raashanai died September 5 after Nicholette Lawrence struck her in the abdomen on September 3, rupturing her stomach. She did not seek medical attention for her daughter. Raashanai weighed 55 lbs. at the time of her death. Lawrence was charged with first-degree murder and her other children were removed from the home.

Date: September 5, 2014
Location: Waukegan, Illinois

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Three girls, ages 19, 16, and 12, were physically assaulted by their mother, Pamela Christensen, in an attempt to murder them. Their father, former pastor Vaughn Christensen, was abusive and controlling of his wife and children, and Pamela was seeking a divorce from him when he called her and ordered her to kill the children. All three girls were homeschooled.

After receiving her husband’s message, Pamela Christensen dressed the girls all in white “to meet Jesus” and tried to get them to drink poison. The girls refused and one called the police; Christensen managed to stab two of the girls and herself before authorities arrived. Christensen was charged with three counts of attempted murder.

Date: September 25, 2014
Location: Montgomery, Illinois

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Nine boys, ages 12 to 17, were beaten, starved, and imprisoned by Nathan Jessop. All were current or former members of the FLDS who had been sent by their parents to live with Jessop due to their supposed disobedience; several of the boys did not know what they had done to be sent there and one reported that he had been sent away for exchanging text messages with a girl. Tammy Jessop, one of Nathan’s stepmothers, homeschooled the boys, although “education appeared to stop when the boys were old enough to pursue a GED diploma.”

Some of the boys had been with Jessop since late 2012, when they had lived in Wyoming. In early 2013 they moved to Idaho, where Tammy and two girls, ages 20 and 16, joined them in an adjoining home. One of the boys was Nathan Jessop’s son, age 16; three were his stepsons; and three others were his nephews. The boys were beaten with boards and brooms; pantries were kept locked and the boys were not allowed to eat breakfast unless they woke up by 6 am. The boys were punished by being sent out into the cold without jackets and one of the boys was imprisoned for two days in a furnace room. The boys were also exploited for their labor, being forced to work without pay making furniture for Jessop to sell.

The abuse came to light when one of the boys ran away and reported it to Holding Out Help, a group that assists people leaving polygamous families. The other eight boys were removed from the home by social services. Two of these, brothers, chose to remain in foster care, while the other six were returned to their parents. Jessop pleaded guilty to three counts of misdemeanor injury to a child: one from his imprisonment of the boy in the furnace room, and two from his failure to report to the authorities that both his son and the boy who contacted HOH had run away. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Date: July 10, 2014
Location: Big Piney, Wyoming; Pocatello, Idaho

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A 13-year-old boy was starved and imprisoned in a bathroom by his father, Peter D. Hansen. The boy’s 10-year-old sister was also starved. Both were homeschooled.

After the Hansens were evicted from their home in 2009, they took up residence in their Seventh-Day Adventist church. Hansen kept his children on a strict vegetarian diet with two meals per day. As punishment for disobedience, the boy was repeatedly locked in a cold church bathroom with no light, sometimes for over a week at a time.

The abuse was discovered after a call to the child abuse hotline. The courts did not find enough evidence to convict Hansen for food deprivation, but he was convicted for the imprisonment. He was sentenced to three years in prison but only served 100 days. The children’s mother, who lived with them, was not charged.

Date: November 2009
Location: Springfield, Missouri

Seven children—Erina (age 19, right), Kathryn (16), Benjamin (14), Mary (13), James (11), Frederick (9), and Jane (8)—were starved and neglected by their parents, Michael and JoAnn McGuckin (center). All were homeschooled.

Both Michael and JoAnn suffered from mental illness, and the family lived in poverty completely off the grid. The children subsisted mainly on lily pads and pond water; the house was filled with garbage. Erina, the oldest, was primarily responsible for homeschooling the children and caring for her youngest sister. Erina left home in 2000 to join the military but was medically discharged due to complications of long-term malnourishment. Then, in May 2001, Michael McGuckin died of malnourishment after a long struggle with multiple sclerosis. These events prompted Erina to report the family. When authorities arrived to remove the children, a five-day standoff ensued.

JoAnn McGuckin was arrested on charges of child injury which were later dismissed. She was reunited with her children in 2002.

Date: May 29, 2001
Location: Sandpoint, Idaho

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Amber Rose Nicklas, age 13 months, was abducted from her foster parents in Norwalk, California in September 2003 by three of her teenage biological aunts. Though two of the girls were caught, the third managed to escape with Amber, who was missing for seven years. Amber was raised by a loving Romany family in Arizona who did not know she had been abducted—they were told that her drug addict mother had given her up. However, they did not have any identifying paperwork for her, so she could not be enrolled in school. Instead she was homeschooled in the Romany tradition, although when she was found she could not read or write, although she was bilingual in English and Romany (mistakenly identified in several news sources as ‘Romanian’).

She was discovered in 2010 after police received a tip about her whereabouts; she was subsequently returned to her foster parents.

Date: July 14, 2010
Location: Phoenix, Arizona

Judah Cobble, age 12, was repeatedly spanked with a belt by his father, Donald Cobble, a minister at the Christian Teaching and Worship Center. Judah’s teachers reported suspected abuse to social services, who found that there was substantial risk to Judah, who had ADD and “arthrogryposis, a congenital muscle condition which require[d] him to wear braces on his back and legs.” However, Judah’s case was closed shortly thereafter. Donald Cobble then withdrew his son from school to homeschool him. He later sued social services and won.

Date: March 1997
Location: Woburn, Massachusetts

Five children, girls aged 15, 14, and 6 and boys aged 13 and 11, were burned, beaten, starved, and imprisoned by their adoptive parents, Patrick (center) and Sherry Kelley. Their grandparents, George and Shirley Long, knew about the abuse but did nothing to stop it. After the children were withdrawn from school when the family moved to Big Lake, “the Kelleys soon gave up trying to home school them.”

The children were placed with the Kelleys in 1998 after being removed from their parents, who were substance abusers. They were forced to work outside 20 hours a day. They were beaten with metal pipes and shovels. They were sometimes forced to sleep outside in the Alaska winter with no heat. The younger boy, who now goes by T.J. White (pictured at right), suffered burns over a large part of his body which went untreated; he also lost a finger to frostbite and had his arm broken by a beating. The children were locked in bedrooms and tied to beds; the older boy was chained to a tree and imprisoned in a coffin-like sealed box. They were punished for eating and deprived of food.

The abuse came to light when George Long called the police after one of the children received a particularly vicious beating. Sherry and Patrick Kelley were each charged with 9 felonies and 34 misdemeanors; in a later plea agreement they Sherry pleaded no contest to assault and criminal nonsupport while Patrick pleaded no contest to child endangerment. In November 2006 they were sentenced to time served. George Long was convicted of assault and sentenced to time served.

Date: July 9, 2004
Location: Big Lake, Wasilla, Alaska

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At least 6 children were ritually sexually assaulted by George Otis Johnston (right, sometimes identified as ‘Johnson’), the pastor of Grandview Valley Baptist Church North, and four elders at its sister church Grand Valley Independent Baptist Church: pastor Raymond Lambert (left), his wife Patty Lambert, and her brothers Paul and Tom Epling. All the children in Grandview Valley compound were homeschooled at the Grand Valley Christian Academy. Some of the abuse occurred while Johnston was tutoring one of the children in algebra.

The abuse came to light in May 2006 when eight members of the commune walked away from the church with no money or physical belongings. One of the women told authorities about abuses that had taken place at the compound. In August 2006, the approximately 20 children who remained at the compound were taken into custody by social services. Johnston and the others were charged with a number of felonies; however, all of the charges were eventually dropped due to witnesses’ being unwilling to testify, the statute of limitations being invoked (some of the abuse had occurred in the 1970s and 1980s), and the victims’ desire to avoid further victimization in court.

Date: August 24, 2006
Location: Granby, Missouri; Pineville, Missouri

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An 11-year-old boy and a 9-year-old girl were tortured by their grandparents, LaDonna (right) and Johnny Stilwell, and their mother Brenda Frazier (not pictured), using an electric cattle prod. The boy was also locked in his room with a bucket for a toilet. The children were homeschooled.

The abuse came to light when the boy informed social services about it. The Stilwells and Frazier were charged with and convicted of child abuse. LaDonna Stilwell was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but her sentence was suspended. Johnny Stilwell was sentenced to 20 years of probation. Frazier was sentenced to 15 years of probation.

Date: November 2002
Location: Enid, Oklahoma

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C.H., a 12-year-old boy, was groomed and forced to appear in pornography by Michael Alvin Krause, his homeschool teacher.

Krause befriended the boy’s mother, Misty Hebert, and grandmother Nancy Hunt, claiming that he had been “a Pentecostal preacher and had helped ‘problem teens’ by home-schooling them.” Hebert pulled C.H. from school after he experienced problems and engaged Krause to be C.H.’s homeschool teacher. Eventually C.H. began living with Krause in his trailer, where Krause took nude photos of C.H.

The abuse came to light when Krause took C.H. on a trip to Wisconsin and Hebert was informed by Wisconsin authorities that Krause had previously been investigated for “possession of child pornography and abuse of two other boys,” the 10- and 11-year-old sons of his former roommate Betty Baum. Hebert entered Krause’s trailer and found computers containing nude photos of C.H. and the two other boys. She turned the evidence over to the Texas authorities.

Krause was found guilty of possession of child pornography and indecency with a child sexual contact. He was sentenced to nine years in prison.

Date: December 8, 2003
Location: Gilchrist, Texas

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Three boys, ages 12, 14, and 19, with severe mental and physical disabilities, along with three disabled adults, were neglected by their adoptive parents, Timothy and Karen “Sue” Tolin. The children were homeschooled.

The 19-year-old was autistic and legally blind and was imprisoned naked in a locked crib. There had been previous social services involvement regarding the children being educationally neglected, but HSLDA had intervened and agreed to perform home visits to monitor the children. These visits were apparently not conducted.

The Tolins were charged with unlawful imprisonment and vulnerable adult abuse.

Date: October 20, 2014
Location: Paris Township, Michigan

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Jamie Leighanna Brooks, age 11 (who later changed her name to Katelyn Colbie Pendleton), was starved, beaten, and scalded by her caregivers, Kizza Monika Lopez and Melonea Feagin. Lopez had pulled Jamie out of school to homeschool her. It is unclear whether Lopez’s other children were abused.

When she was 9, Jamie’s biological mother Velma Hare gave her to Lopez. Lopez and Feagin, her babysitter, whipped Jamie with plastic coat hangers, threw scalding water on her, alternatively starved and force-fed her, and made her sleep in a closet. An anonymous tip brought the authorities to rescue Jamie.

Lopez and Feagin were convicted of child abuse. Lopez was also charged with neglect and sentenced to 20 years in prison; Feagin got 15. Jamie was adopted into the Pendleton family and changed her name to Katelyn.

Date: May 8, 2008
Location: Fort Walton Beach, Florida

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A 15-year-old girl was repeatedly sexually assaulted by her stepfather, Kevin Carothers, and her mother Theresa Carothers, over the course of three years. The girl was homeschooled in online classes. A “witness”, possibly an adult sibling of the girl, also described being sexually assaulted by Kevin Carothers.

Kevin Carothers, a registered sex offender who had been convicted of child sexual abuse in 1997, married Theresa in 2006. Kevin began to assault the girl in summer 2009; in December 2009 both Kevin and Theresa began assaulting the girl together. The abuse came to light when the girl disclosed it to her grandmother, whom the Carotherses lived with. The grandmother then found nude photos of the girl on a camera and called social services.

Kevin Carothers pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a child and Theresa Carothers pleaded guilty to assault and attempted sexual assault of a child.

Date: August 17, 2012
Location: Denver, Colorado

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Five children, ages 7 to 13, were neglected and denied medical care by their parents, Robert H. Simons III and Mary Ella Tittle. The children’s grandmother, Roberta Sauls, knew about the neglect and did nothing. A woman who lived with the family, Leona Patricia Bentler, also knew about the neglect and did nothing. Her 8-year-old daughter was also neglected. Simons and Tittle evaded social services for years, telling officials in Tennessee that they were homeschooling in Pennsylvania, and telling officials in Pennsylvania that they were homeschooling in Tennessee. Although Tittle tried to teach the kids what little she knew, she was not successful and the children could not read or write, did not know their ages or last names, and could not brush their teeth or hold a pencil.

The oldest girl was suffering from advanced kidney disease and an infected rat bite when an anonymous tip brought social services to the door. She recovered after a kidney transplant and the children began to attend school in their foster home. Simons and Tittle were each found guilty on two counts of aggravated child neglect. Simons was sentenced to 18 years in prison; Tittle got 17 years. Charges against Bentler were dropped.

Date: April 22, 2010
Location: Jonesborough, Tennessee

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Three children, a 9-year-old girl, a 7-year-old boy, and a 6-year-old boy, were tortured by their adoptive parents, Charles and Suzan Sealock. The Sealocks’ biological child, a 14-year-old boy, and an adopted 3-year-old child were not abused. The children were homeschooled.

The seven-year-old boy was imprisoned in a bathroom for days at a time with only baby food to eat. He was also beaten, pinched and bitten by his parents. The other two children showed similar previous injuries. The abuse came to light when the 7-year-old boy escaped and went to a neighbor for help. The Sealocks were charged with aggravated child abuse and false imprisonment.

Date: August 30, 2014
Location: Dandridge, Tennessee

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Grayson Bell, age 11, who went by ‘Blayne’, was physically abused by his father, Ernest W. Bell III, and his stepmother Kristen M. Downs. Blayne had been removed from school in 2012 to be homeschooled, although Bell and Downs “never followed the appropriate program nor registered the home schooling with the state for approval.”

The abuse came to light when the boy ran away from home and was reported missing. When he was found, authorities noticed bruises and interviewed the boy. Bell and Downs were charged with physical child abuse and neglect.

Date: October 14, 2014
Location: Plain Dealing, Louisiana

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Thi My Lan Nguyen, born c.1967 and later known as Jackie Zudis, was sexually assaulted for decades by her adoptive father, George Joseph England (who used the alias Stephen Arthur Seagoe). He kept her in school until she was a teenager—homeschooling became an option around that time, and England pulled Zudis from school, claiming to be homeschooling.

The abuse came to light when Zudis went to authorities nearly 15 years after she escaped from England. In 2011, England was sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Date: May 2005
Location: West Palm Beach, Florida

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Benson (age 14, left), Emery (age 12, center), and Zion Strack (age 11, right) were victims of a murder-suicide committed by their parents, Benjamin and Kristi Strack. The children were homeschooled.

The Stracks suffered from mental illness—one of them had substance abuse problems, and Kristi had severe depression. The children were poisoned by their parents, who then killed themselves. The children knew that they were going to die—Benson left a goodbye note for one of his friends. The Stracks’ bodies were discovered by the children’s older brother, Janson McGee.

Date: September 27, 2014
Location: Springville, Utah

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Four children—Sheryl* (age 16), Harlan* (13), and Callie* (10), along with their 16-year-old uncle—were emotionally and physically abused by their foster parents, John and Margaret “Margie” Cantrell. The children were frequently “homeschooled”—that is, kept home from school as a form of punishment while Margie claimed to be homeschooling them.

The children had been removed from the home of Shauntel Mayo, the mother of three of them, and her boyfriend Jamie Pittman, due to neglect. In 2005 they had been placed with the Cantrells, who had raised more than 30 children including their three biological children. Shortly afterwards, Margie Cantrell went to the authorities with reports that the children had disclosed ritual sexual abuse in a swingers’ club in Mineola, Texas. After 7 people were tried and convicted in the case, in 2008 two of the Cantrells’ former foster children from California came forward to allege sexual abuse by John Cantrell.

The abuse came to light in 2013 when the children’s 21-year-old foster sister, who still lived in the home, reported it to social services, who removed the children from the Cantrells’ home. Sheryl and the 16-year-old boy alleged that she had been slapped, punched, and pulled by the hair and that he had been “spanked with a wooden back scratcher so hard that it had broken.” The children were forced to sleep in an unheated garage and the food pantries were kept locked. The children had not seen a doctor while in the Cantrells’ care. Three other former foster children reported that Margie was controlling and manipulative and would yell at the children and brainwash them into believing stories she made up. These allegations threw the conclusions of the 7 Mineola cases into doubt.

*Not their real names

Date: October 28, 2013
Location: Lake Brenda, Tyler, Texas

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