Witness an astonishing moment when children who were kept captive by their parents in a Spanish dwelling of horrors caught sight of the sunlight after almost four years during a daring police rescue.
Authorities in the city of Oviedo in the north found the three boys – twins aged eight and their ten-year-old sibling – inside the residence, seemingly confined there since December 2021, as their parents were supposedly anxious about the spread of Covid.
The children’s parents have been named locally as German Christian Steffen, 53, and his American-born wife Melissa Ann Steffen, 48.
The couple have been remanded in custody and warned they could eventually be jailed for up to seven years if charged and convicted.
Investigators were concerned the children seemed unsteady as they walked outside for the first time in years – almost half the length of their lives.
During a touching scene as they stepped outside for the first time, they started to breathe rapidly and threw themselves onto the grass to touch and feel the greenery, according to Bild.
Police in Oviedo visited the property on Monday, during the Spanish blackouts, and were horrified by the conditions the children were living in, DW reports.
It is understood the family closed themselves off during the Covid-19 pandemic, forbidding the children from going outside and keeping them confined to the house, where they lived in squalor and slept in small cribs.
An investigating source said the parents bought medication containing THC, the main psychoactive element in cannabis, on the black market and gave it to the children as treatment for ADHD – a condition investigators said they are not even sure the youngsters were suffering.
Images taken inside the house showed horrifying drawings of monsters with sharp teeth scrawled on the cots of the children. The children were still wearing nappies when police found them.
Two of the children are lead from the house in Spain after police intervened on Wednesday
Police in the northern city of Oviedo found the three young boys – twins aged eight and their ten-year-old brother – in the house on Wednesday
The children’s father has been named locally as German tech recruiter Christian Steffen, 53
Spanish police said the house was in a disgusting state, with hoards of rubbish and mountains of accumulated medicines
Authorities had previously received a tip from a neighbour, who raised concerns they had never seen the children go to school, DW reports.
Police became suspicious when they noticed that only one man was registered as living in the house – but his supermarket orders were enough for several people.
The children’s mother reportedly told cops after her arrest that they had asked officials in Germany where they lived before moving to northern Spain for permission to educate their kids at home after the pandemic began, and emigrated after being warned that social services would be alerted if they took them out of school.
A guest room in the house in a quiet neighbourhood of the Asturian city of Oviedo called Toleo, which they had been renting for the past four years, had been turned into a makeshift classroom where the couple’s three boys had learnt to read, write and draw.
Spanish police said the house was in a disgusting state when they entered, with hoards of rubbish and mountains of accumulated medicines.
Dirty nappies were piled up in one of the bathrooms and used tampons found under the parents’ double bed, according to reports, while the parents’ room is said to have been filled with half a dozen air purifier machines they kept in their bedroom.
Surfaces were covered in filthy pet excrement and the family also had a cat with a massive tumour.
Dirty nappies were piled up in one of the bathrooms and used tampons found under the parents’ double bed, according to reports, while the couple’s bedroom is said to have been filled with half a dozen air purifier machines.
The children were found wearing nappies and discovered they were forced to sleep in caged beds during their ordeal.
Reports emerged overnight that the youngsters were suffering from severe constipation after being rescued because they weren’t allowed to go to the toilet when they wanted.
A source close to the ongoing investigation said: ‘They had a timetable and a maximum number of times a day they could use the toilet because the rest of the time they had to wear nappies.’
A shocking paediatric report identifying their ‘severe constipation’ flagged up faeces in their intestines because of the long wait they endured between relieving themselves, El Espanol reported.
‘At first, there was nothing particularly striking,’ Lozano said of their call to the house on Monday.
But the parents started behaving strangely when they asked to come in.
Spanish police said the house was in a disgusting state, with hoards of rubbish and mountains of accumulated medicines. A bathroom appeared to be used for a sick cat
‘He was disheveled, barefoot. He asked us to wear masks and keep our distance,’ one officer told El Espanol.
‘He immediately said there were minors in the house. But to our surprise, not only did that happen, but neither parent denied that they had been isolated for years, nor did they show any special knowledge of having done anything wrong.’
When they were allegedly allowed to enter the property, they noted that the parents put ‘up to three masks on the children’ before letting them in, El Mundo reports.
The mother told the officers to be careful as her children were very sick.
The three young boys were freed having apparently lived solely inside the house since December 2021, at the height of the pandemic.
The minors were barefoot, wearing diapers and still sleeping in cribs. When they wanted to take them out of the building, they did not even have shoes of their size, since they had not been bought shoes for years.
The motivation of the parents for keeping the children locked in their own home is not yet known.
Investigators speaking to El Comercio suggested that the parents suffered from ‘Covid syndrome’ and lived in fear of the virus.
Officers said the children did not appear sick, but were ‘dirty’.
‘The children were in a deplorable state,’ one officer told El Mundo.
‘They weren’t malnourished, because they were fed. But they were also dirty and completely disconnected from reality…’
Terrifying drawings by the children on a caged bed. The children were aged 8 to 10
The German-American mother, 48, reportedly told police that she and her husband thought it was the best way to keep them safe.
Inside the house, police found a large supply of ADHD medicine and face masks.
The children were kept out of school and forbidden from leaving the house.
Doors were locked and the windows were permanently closed. The children were not even allowed to go into the garden.
El Mundo, citing local testimonies, said the father always went to the gate of the property wearing a mask, both to pick up takeaway deliveries and mail.
Police said when the children were freed, one of them knelt on the grass and ‘touched it with amazement’.
‘When we took them out of the house, into the garden, where they didn’t even want to go outside, they saw a snail and went crazy,’ one officer told El Mundo. ‘They were scared.’
‘We have given three children back their lives,’ said Chief Inspector Francisco Javier Lozano after the raid.
Over the years, the children were kept so hidden that even neighbours did not realise they were in the house.
The husband and wife duo are now being held in custody without bail pending further investigations following the discovery of the children.
A German couple who had been living cut off from the world kept their children sequestered for more than three years in Spain
The operation and investigation into the children began on April 14 after a resident of the area raised the alarm.
The woman had heard voices that sounded like children coming from the house although she had never seen anyone leave the home to play or go to school.
The blinds were always closed and there was no clear sign of life, neighbours said.
‘Honestly, I don’t remember knowing it was inhabited. The blinds were always down, no noise, no cars. Nothing to indicate life,’ said Rafael Ruiz, who lived opposite.
But, after several days of surveillance, investigators were clear that more than one person had to live there.
They saw movement through the few windows that were not closed, and assessed somebody must be inside from the number of boxes of food orders that the man brought into the home.
The chief commissioner of the Local Police of Oviedo, Francisco Javier Lozano, gave a press conference on Wednesday in which he explained the details of the operation that saw the arrest of the couple at 2.45pm on Monday.
At the moment, the reasons that led this family to live in captivity since 2021 and in unsanitary conditions inside the Asturian villa are unknown
The initial search of the house was made more difficult because Spain had been plunged into darkness by an electricity outrage.
When police knocked on the front door, the father answered but asked the officers to wait for a few minutes so the children could put their masks on.
One officer told the Spanish press: ‘They were very scared and around the mother, who told us all the time that the little ones had serious pathologies and that we should not approach them.
‘They had three masks each on top of each other. They were oblivious to any contact with reality.’
At the moment, the reasons that led this family to live in captivity since 2021 and in unsanitary conditions inside the Asturian villa are unknown.
The children spoke mostly in English. After being evaluated at the Central University Hospital of Asturias, they have been placed under the guardianship of the Government of the Principality.
It is not ruled out that their parents will be charged with crimes of habitual abuse, abandonment of minors, and against fundamental rights.
As a summary of the operation, the chief commissioner of the Local Police of Oviedo, Francisco Javier López Lozano said: ‘We have dismantled the house of horrors’.
