Walter and Melissa Goodman are facing multiple counts of chronic neglect of a child (Picture: Facebook)
A morbidly obese family allegedly starved a 14-year-old girl and kept her locked in her bedroom for years.
The youngster weighed just 35lbs after her family starved and locked her up with surveillance cameras for at least two years, according to a criminal complaint seen by the Daily Mail.
She was taken to hospital where she told staff that the last time she left the house was when she was either 10 or 12 years old, the complaint said.
Police arrested four people, including the teenager’s father, Walter Goodman, 47, on multiple counts of chronic neglect of a child.
Savanna LeFever pictured in police custody (Picture: Outagamie County Courts)
His wife, Melissa, 50, who is not the mother of the victim, and daughter, Savanna LeFever, 29, as well as LeFever’s partner Kayla Stemler, 27, were all living at the Green Earth Trailer Court in Oneida with the victim and are facing the same charges.
Officers found the young girl on the brink of death at her home in Wisconsin, US, on August 21 after Walter called 911.
He reported that his daughter, whom he claimed was autistic, was almost in a state of coma and had not eaten in days, according to the complaint.
When police arrived, they noted that the girl’s bones were prominent and that she looked as if she were a young child, around six or eight years old.
According to the document, Walter told officers the victim didn’t like to eat and that she had not been seen by a doctor in a year and a half because the last time they went, the doctor acted ‘weird’.
The girl was allegedly given limited bathroom access and forced to sleep on the floor.
The family’s home in Green Earth Trailer Court in Oneida (Picture: WLUK-TV FOX 11)
She was not allowed to speak, and if she did, it was to a camera that was set up in her locked bedroom, which allegedly monitored her like Big Brother.
The suspects told each other to ‘only give her water at specific times’ and that ‘she is not to be out of her room at all’, according to text messages cited in the complaint.
Other messages reportedly said to take the girl’s mattress from her.
Walter said he put a bucket in his daughter’s room because she was throwing up and mentioned he had a camera watching her because she had a history of self-abuse.
When officers asked where her mother was, Walter responded: ‘She’s a w***e.’
A neighbour told NBC 26 about the girl’s condition when police arrived.
Walter Goodman told police his daughter was almost in a state of coma and had not eaten in days (Picture: Outagamie County Courts)
Pam Medina said: ‘I remember they carried her out… she looked very small… her head just kind of fell to the side. I didn’t even know a child lived there.’
She added: ‘If I’d known that, I would have been beating them girls up. I’d go all the way in there just to pull her out.’
Medina said she would watch multiple food deliveries go to the house daily.
Nurses at St Vincent Hospital in Green Bay said she was suffering from pressure sores, a massive bruise on the right side of her forehead, weighed 35lbs and was also hypothermic.
Medical staff diagnosed the teenager with severe malnutrition.
She also had signs of multiorgan dysfunction, including acute respiratory failure, cardiac dysfunction, severe acute hepatitis, pancreatitis, coagulopathy, hypothermia, hypoglycemia and electrolyte derangements, according to the complaint.
She had to be given feeding tubes until she was able to eat on her own.
On August 25, the girl’s condition improved in hospital. She began to communicate with medical staff by writing on a piece of paper.
Nurses also said she wrote: ‘I’m hungry,’ ‘I need a snack,’ ‘Can I watch TV?’ ‘I need to poop’ and ‘I can’t breathe.’
She wrote three different times asking when she could eat.
According to the complaint, about a week later, the victim tried chocolate pudding and asked for another.
While eating the second, the girl said: ‘My dad will be so mad.’
When asked what he would be mad about, she is said to have replied: ‘He doesn’t like when I eat this much.’
And when staff told her she would be having three meals a day, her eyes lit up, and she asked for food like pancakes, M&Ms, tacos and also stated she was looking forward to having vegetables.
When she was first taken to hospital, her father said she ate three meals per day as well as snacks.
He said she would sometimes vomit because she ate too fast, needed to be monitored while eating and would sometimes refuse meals due to her ‘autism’ diagnosis, according to the document.
A police mugshot of Kayla Stemler (Picture: Outagamie County Sheriff’s Office)
The girl told an occupational therapist that she would bathe ‘whenever they would let me’, adding ‘maybe weekly or monthly, I don’t really know’.
She also lacked basic skills and knowledge. She needed help pressing the sink buttons because of her limited strength – and when the staff offered her deodorant, she said she didn’t know what it was.
According to the complaint, the teenager said she was no longer able to get to the bathroom on her own.
She said she needed to push herself up on furniture and hold onto objects – and was no longer able to get up and walk.
Julie DuQuaine, Outagamie County assistant district attorney, told Fox 11 News: ‘She has now since been released from the hospital and is gaining weight and doing better.
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‘I was able to observe photographs of her, and she looked like a skeleton. She was just literally skin and bones at 35lbs.’
The victim’s grandparents told the outlet she has gained weight, grown and was ‘doing well’.
The arrests came on November 10. Walter, LeFever and Stemler are expected to return to court in the coming weeks.
Melissa’s initial appearance was held on November 13.
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