TWO parents who locked up their three bow-legged children aged 8 to 10 in nappies for four years over fears of catching Covid have been jailed.

German tech recruiter Christian Steffen, 54, and his American-born wife Melissa, 49, trapped their kids in a so-called “House of Horrors” between 2021 and 2025.

The parents who locked up their kids for three years have been jailed

Horror images showed the inside of the Oviedo home

The parents were sentenced to three years in jail and have also been banned from seeing the youngsters until they are over 18 years old.

The “House of Horrors” was discovered in Oviedo, Spain, after neighbours reported suspicious activity coming from the house.

One local believed there were children living in the house – despite never seeing them in or around the property.

The couple were arrested on suspicion of child cruelty and failing to comply with their duties as parents.

Christian Steffen was sentenced to three years in prison

The children were kept in appalling conditions, prosecutors said

Both parents were acquitted of the unlawful detention charges – but they were convicted of habitual psychological abuse within the family.

Mr and Mrs Steffen have now been sentenced to two years and four months in prison each.

They also received an extra six months in prison each for abandonment of family.

The couple were previously facing individual sentences totalling 25 years and four months in prison for crimes of habitual psychological violence in the family and illegal detention.

The children were cut off from the world in the secluded rented villa in Oviedo

The children were rescued in 2025

The pair kept their three children locked up – two eight-year-old twins and a ten-year-old boy – between December 2021 and April 2025.

They kept their children inside the house over fears they would catch Covid, prosecutors said.

The three children remained isolated inside the house without contact with other people in real life or through social media, according to the indictment.

They did not know relatives or people other than their own parents and were banned from going outside, even to the garden.

Both Mr and Mrs Steffen instilled a fear of catching Covid into the children, prosecutors said.

The twins were unable to read or write by the time they were rescued.

The minors also suffered physical consequences as a result of the horrific conditions they lived in.

They had “severe constipation” due to prolonged use of diapers, walked hunched over and bowed, and suffered from skin irritations.

The house, according to the investigation, was in terrible hygienic conditions, with large amounts of garbage and dirt littered around the property.

The children may well have been trapped for many more years if not for a neighbour, who kept a detective’s diary logging Christian’s suspicious activity.

She eventually handed over the notebook to police, who raided the home and freed the children.

A city hall source told Spanish daily El Mundo: “The neighbour went to Oviedo City Council’s Childhood and Family Service on April 14 with what was practically a handmade police report.

“The shopping list was the clue that set it all off.

“It was the list of a family, not a single person, and there was something that didn’t fit at all which was the striking amount of nappies.”

The source added: “Without that neighbour, the children would almost certainly have gone undetected in that house for many more years.”

Sources close to the investigation previously said: “Bags and bags of garbage were piling up at the bottom of the stairs…

“They had no television, no electronic devices for the children, hardly any games, not even shoes in their size; the shoes the children had were the size they wore four years ago, when they arrived.”

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Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/16343365/parents-jailed-locking-kids-nappies-covid/