“All three children began to breathe deeply, as if they had never been outside before,” that’s how an investigator described the condition of three young siblings who were rescued from a home in Oviedo, Spain.
For three years the children were effectively imprisoned by their own parents under what police describe as “obsessive” and “delusional” COVID-19 fears.
The siblings—8-year-old twins and a 10-year-old—had reportedly not left their house since late 2021, and were living in conditions authorities deemed hazardous to their mental and physical health.
The parents, who were both arrested, were said to have been suffering from “COVID syndrome,” a form of extreme paranoia that results in people imposing strict restrictions on themselves and others long after public health guidelines have changed.
Siblings were rescued from “house of horrors” where they were imprisoned for three years due to their parents’ COVID fears
Image credits: fotosr52/Adobe Stock (Not the actual photo)
The dramatic rescue took place last Monday (April 28), after local police launched an investigation prompted by a neighbor’s concern that no children from the home had attended school in years.
Upon being released from their imprisonment, authorities described a scene moving and concerning in equal measure.
The children were reportedly mesmerized by the simple sight of grass and sunlight, touching the ground and reacting with irrational fear to snails in the garden
Image credits: Drazen/Adobe Stock (Not the actual photo)
Photos of the children went viral across Spain, showing them leaving the home still wearing face masks—as if the height of the pandemic had never ended.
Both parents—a 53-year-old German man and his 48-year-old German-American wife—were detained on charges of domestic violence, psychological abuse, and child abandonment.
The children were living in “unsanitary” conditions, and had started drawing pictures of monsters in their bedroom
Image credits: El Mundo
Police Chief Javier Lozano explained that the children’s situation flew under the radar for many years due to them finding “nothing unusual about the residence,” but that as investigations continued, the family’s strange and secluded behavior started raising alarms.
Image credits: El Mundo
For instance, the father was the only one being seen by neighbors during those three years, who reportedly left the house only to collect deliveries and mail—the children and their mother, on the other hand, were nowhere to be seen.
When police finally decided to intervene on April 28, they found no resistance from either parent. “Be careful,” the mother told the officers. “My children are very sick.”
Image credits: Daily Mail
Inside, the home was in disarray. Filled with trash, boxes of medication, and a large number of medical masks, the scene was described as “clearly unsanitary” by investigators and a “health and safety risk” for the minors.
Heartwrenching pictures show that the children were “living among feces” and had been sleeping in cribs. Their rooms were also filled with disturbing images, providing a deeply disturbing look at their mental state—drawings of monsters and defaced dolls.
The parents were taken to pretrial custody, while the children were taken to a juvenile care facility
Image credits: Freelancermap
Beyond the dirt and mental anguish, the children were described to have been found “in terrible shape” by officers.
“They were not malnourished, because they were fed. But they were dirty and completely cut off from reality,” one of the investigators said.
“And not just because they didn’t go to school. When we took them out of the house, into the garden, where they wouldn’t even go outside, they saw a snail and went crazy, freaked out.”
Image credits: Nomad_Soul/Adobe Stock (Not the actual photo)
The three minors were taken to the National Human Rights Center for medical evaluations, which confirmed that the children had no serious illnesses, contradicting the parents’ claims that they were too sick to leave the house.
They are now in the custody of Spain’s Ministry of Welfare, who placed them in a juvenile center. The parents are being held in pretrial detention without bail as of last Wednesday (April 30).
The case has not only shocked Spain, but revived memories of the psychological toll the COVID-19 pandemic had on society at large.
“We’ve all been affected by Covid syndrome and what the pandemic has brought, and we can speculate about what led a family to live locked up for so long,” Lozano said in a press conference.