The Great Smoky Mountain Journal

Staff, Wire Reports

Posted: Sunday, January 21, 2018 06:30 PM

Indiana Woman Accused Of Keeping Two Daughters Confined For Years

DECATUR, Ind. (AP/WANE) -- An Indiana woman accused of keeping her two daughters confined at home for years allegedly failed to educate the now teenage youths, who told authorities their mother gave up on them “a long time ago.”

CBS affiliate WANE identified the girls' mother as Mary Heller. The 64-year-old woman faces three counts of neglect of a dependent.

Police said the woman’s daughters were emaciated and pale when officers arrived at their filthy Decatur, Indiana, home in January, to investigate a neglect report. Officers were summoned to the home about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Fort Wayne three days after the teens’ mother was hospitalized following a fall inside the home.

Two women who were friends of the girls’ cousin had, at his urging, taken the sisters to eat at a fast-food restaurant and then to a shop for groceries because the home was without food a day before the mother fell, according to court documents.

During that trip, the girls did not know how to place a food order at the restaurant and had no social interaction skills at all, according to the affidavit filed Sept. 20 by the Adams County prosecutor. The youngest girl appeared mesmerized by the food products available inside the grocery they visited.

“I always dreamed of this, going to the store,” she told the women, according to the affidavit.

A psychologist later found that the sisters — who are now ages 19 and 16 — suffered psychological trauma from “neglect and isolation,” according to the affidavit, which states that the sisters suffered from a “lack of any meaningful interaction with others” for several years.

When police were summoned to the sisters’ home a few days after their shopping trip, officers found the two-story house unkempt and filled with a foul odor, while the girls were “very skinny” and pale with long, greasy hair.

The sisters, who were taken into the care of child protective services, told officers their mother allowed them outside only to retrieve the mail or newspaper and that they had over time become afraid to venture outside.