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Update on Missing 16 year old Skylar Neese
March 18, 2013 in The Stories | Tags: children, death, endangered, Kids, missing | by RKEnterprises | 1 comment
Skylar Neese Death: Body found in Pennsylvania is missing West Virginia teen, federal officials say
- By
- Crimesider Staff
- Topics
- Daily Blotter

Undated photo of Skylar Neese
(CBS/AP) WHEELING, W.Va. – A body discovered in southwestern Pennsylvania was identified as that of a missing 16-year-old girl who disappeared from West Virginia last summer, federal officials said Wednesday.
PICTURES: Body of W.Va. teen found in Pa.
Remains found in Wayne Township, Pa. on Jan. 16 were confirmed as those of Skylar Neese of Star City, W.Va., said U.S. Attorney William Ihlenfeld, top prosecutor for West Virginia’s northern district. The FBI did tests on her remains and now an investigation into her death is under way.
Skylar was last seen on surveillance video leaving her family’s apartment and getting into a car on July 6, 2012. Her remains were found less than 30 miles from there in Greene County.
Her parents celebrated her 17th birthday without her last month, holding a candlelight vigil with both friends and strangers. The crowd released heart-shaped paper lanterns, which floated into the sky. Her aunt, Carol Michaud, told The Dominion Post that the teenager was an environmentalist, and she would have preferred them to balloons.
Skylar was an honors student at University High in Morgantown, and friends at the event described her as bubbly and kind.
A legislator from the family’s district also recently introduced a bill called Skylar’s Law to ensure that missing children’s cases are handled with urgency. It would modify West Virginia’s Amber Alert plan to issue public announcements when any child is reported missing and thought to be in danger, rather than just those believed to have been kidnapped.
Because Neese was seen getting into a vehicle, family members said authorities classified her as a runaway and no alert was issued. But they believe the girl intended to return, noting that she didn’t take money, contact lenses or other personal items.
Delegate Charlene Marshall, D-Monongalia, said she understands that a surge in alerts might make some people stop paying attention, but she believes it’s still the right thing to do.
Last week, an emotional David Neese appealed to the House Judiciary Committee on his daughter’s behalf before it amended and advanced the measure.
“Changing this law, God forbid, may be too late for Skylar,” he said, fighting back sobs. “But please allow for this bill to be debated on the floor so other families may not have to go through this horrible ordeal.”
March 18, 2013 in The Stories | Tags: abducted, children, Kids, missing | by RKEnterprises | Leave a comment
March 18, 2013 in The Stories | Tags: children, Kids, missing | by RKEnterprises | 1 comment
Lacie Yrigoyen – Endangered Missing
March 18, 2013 in The Stories | Tags: children, endangered, Kids, missing | by RKEnterprises | 1 comment
Lives of Abused Children, in one year
February 11, 2013 in The Stories | Tags: abuse, child abuse, children | by RKEnterprises | 4 comments
Most recent abuse cases
This archive contains cases of abuse of children within the child placement system.
Some of the these children have been killed, other’s survived but suffered from:
In several cases the abuse was hidden from authorities under the pretext of homeschooling.
For an overview of abuse cases by location, see this map.
To make this list as complete as possible we can use your help. If you know of cases not covered, or know of articles not listed with the cases, please subscribe to this group and help maintain this section of the website or send links and articles to this mail address.
Girl adopted by Jerome Mitchell and Hermina Ibarra
Location
Prescott, Arizona
United States
- Add new comment
- 218 reads
Two children adopted by Ingrid Brewer
Palmdale resident Ingrid Brewer reported to the sheriff’s department that her two adoptive children were missing on January 15. Deputies searching for the children, an 8-year-old boy and a 7-year-old girl, found them lying near a parked vehicle on a street near their residence hiding under a blanket. The children were not wearing warm clothing despite temperatures in the mid-20s.
The two children told deputies they ran away from Brewer because they were tired of being tied up and beaten by her. They told deputies that Brewer locked them up in separate bedrooms when she went to work every day, and that on numerous occasions she tied their wrists with zip-ties and beat them, sometimes with an electrical cord or a hammer. They were also reportedly deprived of food.
Both kids had injuries consistent with their descriptions of abuse, including wrist marks indicating zip-tie restraint.
Placement
Location
United States
Baby Girl in foster case with Wilson Lee Tubbs III
Location
Fort Bragg, California
United States
Teenage foster girl in Newcastle NSW
Location
Newcastle, New South Wales
Australia
Children adopted by Nikki and Larry Russell
Location
Terre Haute, Indiana
United States
Primary school-aged foster girl in Newcastle, Australia
Location
Newcastle, New South Wales
Australia
Girls adopted by Tiffany and Dennis Jack
Location
Niceville, Florida
United States
- Add new comment
- 678 reads
Girl adopted by Silver Springs Shores couple
Location
Silver Springs Shores, Florida
United States
Alexander Laws
Homestudy
Placement
Location
Las Vegas, Nevada
United States
Children adopted by Paul and JoAnn Drake
Location
Ankeny, Iowa
United States
- Add new comment
- 243 reads
Boy adopted by Mona and Russell Hauer
Placement
Location
North Mankato, Minnesota
United States
Boy in foster care of Sharanda Hammock
Location
Fayetteville, Arkansas
United States
Girl adopted by Dorothea Vega
Location
Pensacola, Florida
United States
Girls adopted by Flagstaff AZ man
Location
flagstaff, Arizona
United States
- Add new comment
- 275 reads
Logan Garrett and his twin sister

22 month old boy Logan Edward Garrett was adopted along with his twin sister by Jacky Scott Garrett and Emily Garrett. Logan died of blunt force trauma to his abdomen, about 7 months after placement, 1 week after adoption. He had many prior injuries. His sister was underweight and removed from the home. Adoptive father Scott Garrett was charged with capital murder.
Placement
Location
Frisco, Texas
United States
- Add new comment
- 322 reads
Girls adopted by Hickory Hill couple
Location
Hickory Hill, Tennessee
United States
- Add new comment
- 235 reads
Children adopted by Gregory Bernard Lacy and LaQuron D. McLean Lacy
Location
Perris, California
United States
- Add new comment
- 484 reads
Girl adopted by Rajesh Sengar and Bebi Sengar
Location
Indore, Madhya Pradesh
India
Children adopted by Douglas and Kristen Barbour


A 6-year-old boy and an 18-month-old girl, adopted from Ethiopia by Douglas and Kristen Barbour, were severely maltreated by their adoptive parents. The boy was malnourished and had skin lesions and the girl had signs of multiple skull fractures (abusive head trauma) which caused her to be blind in one eye and partially paralyzed.
Homestudy
Placement
Location
Franklin Park, Pennsylvania
United States
Kacper and Klaudia, foster children of Anna and Wieslaw Cz.

3 year old boy and 5 year old girl beaten to death in separate incidents on July 3 and September 12, 2012. The family had 5 foster children, possibly all placed in their home since January 2012.
Location
Puck
Poland
- Add new comment
- 242 reads
Boy in foster care of Mary Enzenbacher
Placement
Location
Cincinnati, Ohio
United States
Girl adopted by Jonathan Outlaw
Location
brooksville, Florida
United States
- Add new comment
- 172 reads
Boy adopted by Matthew and Amy Sweeney (Daniil Kruchin)
Placement
Location
Bristow, Virginia
United States
- Add new comment
- 854 reads
Girl adopted by Samuel and Diana Franklin
Location
Butler, Georgia
United States
Children adopted by Kelly Doreen Morris
Location
hanford, California
United States
- Add new comment
- 182 reads
Children in foster care with Leeds man
Placement
Location
Leeds, West Yorkshire
United Kingdom
Boys adopted by Leslie Tiesler and Brad Thill
Location
Cameron, North Carolina
United States
- 3 comments
- 1045 reads
Bethany Loerke
Location
Tulsa, Oklahoma
United States
Benjamin Yhip

Both parents were arrested on suspicion of murder with Edelyn believed to have caused the head trauma.
Location
Chico, California
United States
Girl adopted by Paul Lavoe
Location
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
United States
- Add new comment
- 202 reads
Children adopted by Peter and Tamara Gable
Location
Middlefield, Connecticut
United States
Girls in care of Don and Beverly Copley
Placement
Location
proctorville, Ohio
United States
Boy in foster care in Kotovo, Russia
Location
Kotovo, Volgograd
Russia
Joseph Maoping Adams
Location
Lexington, Kentucky
United States
Alexis Long

Alexis Nicole Long, 19 month old girl died of blunt force trauma after apparently being thrown onto a changing table by her adoptive mother Jennifer Long. Mrs. Long was charged with murder. Father Timothy Long was charged with second degree cruelty to children.
Location
columbus, Georgia
United States
- Add new comment
- 242 reads
Children in foster care with Mark O’Brien
Location
Republic, Missouri
United States
Girl adopted by Snohomish couple
Location
Everett, Washington
United States
Boys in Foster care in Calgary, Canada
Location
calgary, Alberta
Canada
Don’t forget about the “Missing Children”
February 6, 2013 in Missing Children | Tags: children, missing | by RKEnterprises | Leave a comment
The feral girl in the window– 2005
February 5, 2013 in The Stories | Tags: abuse, children, family, social service | by RKEnterprises | Leave a comment
The family had lived in the rundown rental house for almost three years when someone first saw a child’s face in the window. A little girl, pale, with dark eyes, lifted a dirty blanket above the broken glass and peered out, one neighbor remembered.
Everyone knew a woman lived in the house with her boyfriend and two adult sons. But they had never seen a child there, had never noticed anyone playing in the overgrown yard. The girl looked young, 5 or 6, and thin. Too thin. Her cheeks seemed sunken; her eyes were lost. The child stared into the square of sunlight, then slipped away. This was the 3rd sighting and 3rd report of possible neglect of this child in as many years.
The earliest documents are from Feb. 11, 2002. That was when someone called the child-abuse hot line on her. The caller reported that a child, about 3, was “left unattended for days with a retarded older brother, never seen wearing anything but a diaper. The home is filthy. There are clothes everywhere. There are feces on the child’s seat and the counter is covered with trash.”
It’s not clear what investigators found at the house, but they left Danielle with her mother that day.
Nine months later, another call to authorities. A person who knew Michelle from the Moose Lodge said she was always there playing bingo with her new boyfriend, leaving her children alone overnight. “Not fit to be a mother,” the caller said. The hot-line operator took these notes: The 4-year-old girl “is still wearing a diaper and drinking from a baby bottle. On-going situation, worse since last August. Mom leaves Grant and Danielle at home for several days in a row while she goes to work and spends the night with a new paramour. Danielle … is never seen outside the home.” Again the child-abuse investigators went out. They offered Michelle free day care for Danielle. She refused. And they left Danielle there.
A few months after the second abuse call, Michelle and her kids moved in with her boyfriend in the rundown rental house in Plant City. The day the cops came, Michelle says, she didn’t know what was wrong. Just before noon on July 13, 2005, a Plant City police car pulled up outside that shattered window. Two officers went into the house — and one stumbled back out. Clutching his stomach, the rookie retched in the weeds.
Plant City Detective Mark Holste had been on the force for 18 years when he and his young partner were sent to the house on Old Sydney Road to stand by during a child abuse investigation. Someone had finally called the police. They found a car parked outside. The driver’s door was open and a woman was slumped over in her seat, sobbing. She was an investigator for the Florida Department of Children and Families.
“Unbelievable,” she told Holste. “The worst I’ve ever seen.” The police officers walked through the front door, into a cramped living room. “I’ve been in rooms with bodies rotting there for a week and it never stunk that bad,” Holste said later. “There’s just no way to describe it. Urine and feces — dog, cat and human excrement — smeared on the walls, mashed into the carpet. Everything dank and rotting.” Tattered curtains, yellow with cigarette smoke, dangling from bent metal rods. Cardboard and old comforters stuffed into broken, grimy windows. Trash blanketing the stained couch, the sticky counters. The floor, walls, even the ceiling seemed to sway beneath legions of scuttling roaches.
“It sounded like you were walking on eggshells. You couldn’t take a step without crunching German cockroaches,” the detective said. “They were in the lights, in the furniture. Even inside the freezer. The freezer!” While Holste looked around, a stout woman in a faded housecoat demanded to know what was going on. Yes, she lived there. Yes, those were her two sons in the living room. Her daughter? Well, yes, she had a daughter . . .
The detective strode past her, down a narrow hall. He turned the handle on a door, which opened into a space the size of a walk-in closet. He squinted in the dark. At his feet, something stirred. The detective found Danielle in the back. The only window in the small space was broken. Michelle had tacked a blanket across the shattered glass, but flies and beetles and roaches had crept in anyway. “My house was a mess,” she says. “I’d been sick and it got away from me. But I never knew a dirty house was against the law.” The cop walked past her, carrying Danielle.
• • •
First he saw the girl’s eyes: dark and wide, unfocused, unblinking. She wasn’t looking at him so much as through him. She lay on a torn, moldy mattress on the floor. She was curled on her side, long legs tucked into her emaciated chest. Her ribs and collarbone jutted out; one skinny arm was slung over her face; her black hair was matted, crawling with lice. Insect bites, rashes and sores pocked her skin. Though she looked old enough to be in school, she was naked — except for a swollen diaper.
“The pile of dirty diapers in that room must have been 4 feet high,” the detective said. “The glass in the window had been broken, and that child was just lying there, surrounded by her own excrement and bugs.” When he bent to lift her, she yelped like a lamb. “It felt like I was picking up a baby,” Holste said. “I put her over my shoulder, and that diaper started leaking down my leg.” The girl didn’t struggle. Holste asked, What’s your name, honey? The girl didn’t seem to hear. He searched for clothes to dress her, but found only balled-up laundry, flecked with feces. He looked for a toy, a doll, a stuffed animal. “But the only ones I found were covered in maggots and roaches.” Choking back rage, he approached the mother. How could you let this happen? “The mother’s statement was: ‘I’m doing the best I can,” the detective said. “I told her, ‘The best you can sucks!’ ” He wanted to arrest the woman right then, but when he called his boss he was told to let DCF do its own investigation.
So the detective carried the girl down the dim hall, past her brothers, past her mother in the doorway, who was shrieking, “Don’t take my baby!” He buckled the child into the state investigator’s car. The investigator agreed: They had to get the girl out of there. “Radio ahead to Tampa General,” the detective remembers telling his partner. “If this child doesn’t get to a hospital, she’s not going to make it.”
Her name, her mother had said, was Danielle. She was almost 7 years old. She weighed 46 pounds. She was malnourished and anemic. In the pediatric intensive care unit they tried to feed the girl, but she couldn’t chew or swallow solid food. So they put her on an IV and let her drink from a bottle. Aides bathed her, scrubbed the sores on her face, trimmed her torn fingernails. They had to cut her tangled hair before they could comb out the lice.
Her caseworker determined that she had never been to school, never seen a doctor. She didn’t know how to hold a doll, didn’t understand peek-a-boo. “Due to the severe neglect,” a doctor would write, “the child will be disabled for the rest of her life.” Hunched in an oversized crib, Danielle curled in on herself like a potato bug, then writhed angrily, kicking and thrashing. To calm herself, she batted at her toes and sucked her fists. “Like an infant,” one doctor wrote. She wouldn’t make eye contact. She didn’t react to heat or cold — or pain. The insertion of an IV needle elicited no reaction. She never cried. With a nurse holding her hands, she could stand and walk sideways on her toes, like a crab. She couldn’t talk, didn’t know how to nod yes or no. Once in a while she grunted. She couldn’t tell anyone what had happened, what was wrong, what hurt.
Dr. Kathleen Armstrong, director of pediatric psychology at the University of South Florida medical school, was the first psychologist to examine Danielle. She said medical tests, brain scans, and vision, hearing and genetics checks found nothing wrong with the child. She wasn’t deaf, wasn’t autistic, had no physical ailments such as cerebral palsy or muscular dystrophy. The doctors and social workers had no way of knowing all that had happened to Danielle. But the scene at the house, along with Danielle’s almost comatose condition, led them to believe she had never been cared for beyond basic sustenance. Hard as it was to imagine, they doubted she had ever been taken out in the sun, sung to sleep, even hugged or held. She was fragile and beautiful, but whatever makes a person human seemed somehow missing. Armstrong called the girl’s condition “environmental autism.” Danielle had been deprived of interaction for so long, the doctor believed, that she had withdrawn into herself.
The most extraordinary thing about Danielle, Armstrong said, was her lack of engagement with people, with anything. “There was no light in her eye, no response or recognition. . . . We saw a little girl who didn’t even respond to hugs or affection. Even a child with the most severe autism responds to those.” Danielle’s was “the most outrageous case of neglect I’ve ever seen.” The authorities had discovered the rarest and most pitiable of creatures: a feral child.
“In the first five years of life, 85 percent of the brain is developed,” said Armstrong, the psychologist who examined Danielle. “Those early relationships, more than anything else, help wire the brain and provide children with the experience to trust, to develop language, to communicate. They need that system to relate to the world.”
Danielle’s case raised disturbing questions for everyone trying to help her. How could this have happened? What kind of mother would sit by year after year while her daughter languished in her own filth, starving and crawling with bugs? And why hadn’t someone intervened? The neighbors, the authorities — where had they been? “It’s mind-boggling that in the 21st century we can still have a child who’s just left in a room like a gerbil,” said Tracy Sheehan, Danielle’s guardian in the legal system and now a circuit court judge. “No food. No one talking to her or reading her a story. She can’t even use her hands. How could this child be so invisible?”
Doctors had only the most modest ambitions for her. “My hope was that she would be able to sleep through the night, to be out of diapers and to feed herself,” Armstrong said. If things went really well, she said, Danielle would end up “in a nice nursing home.” Danielle spent six weeks at Tampa General before she was well enough to leave. But where could she go? Not home; Judge Martha Cook, who oversaw her dependency hearing, ordered that Danielle be placed in foster care and that her mother not be allowed to call or visit her. The mother was being investigated on criminal child abuse charges.
“That child, she broke my heart,” Cook said later. “We were so distraught over her condition, we agonized over what to do.” Eventually, Danielle was placed in a group home in Land O’Lakes. She had a bed with sheets and a pillow, clothes and food, and someone at least to change her diapers. “In my entire career with the child welfare system, I don’t ever remember a child like Danielle,” said Luanne Panacek, executive director of the Children’s Board of Hillsborough County. “It makes you think about what does quality of life mean? What’s the best we can hope for her? After all she’s been through, is it just being safe?”