A couple is on trial for keeping their children locked up for four years in Oviedo.

The Oviedo Court will begin the trial this Tuesday of the married couple who They kept their three children locked up For nearly four years, they were held captive in their home on the outskirts of the Asturian capital. The parents, a 53-year-old German man and a 48-year-old woman with dual German and American citizenship, kept their children—eight-year-old twins and a ten-year-old boy—locked up between December 2021 and April 2025 due to an unfounded fear of contagion, according to the prosecution. The couple was remanded in custody last April after a neighbor reported the situation. Both face individual sentences totaling 25 years and four months in prison for habitual psychological abuse within the family and unlawful detention. The trial is now beginning, which the court has ordered to be held behind closed doors "given the seriousness of the crimes" and the "entirely unfavorable harm that could result for the victims, who are minors." A case that shocked Asturias

According to the Public Prosecutor's Office, the couple locked the children inside the house, completely isolating them from the world "and denying them contact with other people, both physically and through any means of communication," thus depriving them of their educational, health, emotional, and social needs. When the children were rescued, they were in a chalet in extremely unsanitary conditions and surrounded by feces. The children had not attended school, so the twins could neither read nor write, and they had no medical monitoring of their health. All three were in very poor condition and possibly suffering from malnutrition. When they were rescued, they were placed in the care of the Asturian government institutions and transferred to a children's center in Oviedo. The Civil Guard was in charge of the investigation.