PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The parents of twin teenage boys from Lehigh County are facing child endangerment charges after one of the boys was found wandering a neighborhood naked last week when temperatures dropped close to 0 degrees.
Around 7 p.m. on Jan. 22, state police said one of the twins, age 15, knocked on a neighbor’s door looking for food. He wasn’t wearing any clothes and it was 2 degrees outside.
Police said the boy’s stepfather had forced him outside naked as a form of punishment. According to reports, he had been outside for about 20 minutes. His feet were red from standing in the snow amid frigid temperatures.
The neighbors contacted police and said as soon as they offered the boy food, he would “not stop eating.”
Troopers said the boy, his twin, and their older sister, who no longer lives in the home, were subject to a series of punishments by their mother and stepfather, Tracy and Joshua Dechant.
Some of the punishments, as stated in court records, include being denied meals, standing outside naked, spending the entire day naked if they failed to handwash their clothes in a sink, and writing phrases such as “weak men are abusive and spiteful, strong men are protective and loving.” When the boys were fed, they were given a small portion of oatmeal and a baby spoon to eat it with.
When emergency personnel saw them last week, the boys weighed 53 and 55 pounds. Hospital officials said a healthy weight for a boy of their height and age is about 143 pounds.
The Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office said the teens have been hospitalized and other children who lived in the home have been taken into custody and turned over to family members.
Tracy and Joshua Dechant have been charged with felony counts of endangering the welfare of children. They are being held in Lehigh County Jail on $75,000 bail each.