DALLAS — Seven special-needs teenagers living near Houston were repeatedly locked in a closet by their adoptive mother and restricted to a lone room strewn with human waste, state and county officials said Tuesday.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services also said a 7-year-old boy died in the same home in January 2011. The agency declined to reveal the circumstances of the death.
The revelations were part of a series of events in Richmond, southwest of Houston, that Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy Nehls described as “heart-breaking.”
The 7-year-old also had special needs, and Family and Protective Services spokesman Tiffani Butler said Tuesday that the other seven were not removed from the home when the child died but that they all lived there at the time.
No charges were filed in the child’s death.
The teens, ages 13 to 16, were removed Nov. 23, but the Fort Bend County sheriff’s office didn’t publicize the case until Monday.