Parents Get Prison Terms After Isolating Their 3 Kids for 4 Years Over COVID Fears
Facts Matter
The Epoch Times
4.9 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2026
⏱️ 12 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
A German-American couple, Christian and Melissa Steffen, kept their three young children—a 10-year-old and 8-year-old twins—locked inside their villa in Spain for nearly four years due to an extreme fear of COVID. The children endured squalid conditions—including a room piled with used diapers—never left the house, had no outside contact, and received no medical care, resulting in severe physical and developmental issues such as difficulty walking, hunched postures, and bowel control problems.
The children were discovered after a neighbor’s suspicions led to a police raid, and the parents were convicted of habitual psychological violence and family abandonment. They received 28-month prison sentences and lost custody. They were also banned from approaching their children and ordered to pay compensation.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Now, for this next story, in order for it to make sense, you have to dig into your memory |
| 0:06.8 | bank a little bit and remember what the news was like back in the years 2020, 2021, and leading |
| 0:14.3 | into the year 2022. |
| 0:16.4 | It was basically, if you remember, wall-to-wall COVID pandemic coverage. |
| 0:21.6 | You had reporters sitting by themselves in their homes, still wearing masks. |
| 0:26.6 | You had people getting castigated for being alone by themselves on the beach. |
| 0:32.6 | And you had global media outlets like CNN, as one example, |
| 0:35.6 | who were posting graphics at the bottom of their |
| 0:38.6 | screen for the entirety of the day showing you the COVID death count. And so keep that in mind, |
| 0:45.4 | as I tell you what just took place over in Europe. Two weeks ago, a husband and wife couple |
| 0:51.1 | were sentenced to prison because they kept their children trapped indoors, |
| 0:55.7 | living in squalid conditions for almost four years, because the couple was afraid of either |
| 1:01.9 | them or their kids catching COVID. From December of 2021, up until April of 2025, when they were |
| 1:08.5 | finally rescued, you had the three kids not be allowed to leave the house, |
| 1:13.3 | which is already by itself bad enough, |
| 1:15.5 | but the state of the house that they were trapped in |
| 1:17.7 | was allegedly so bad, according to the police who were there on site, |
| 1:21.7 | that as just one example, |
| 1:23.5 | they had one room that was dedicated to just piling up, |
| 1:27.1 | used, dirty diapers. |
| 1:29.3 | This isolation, as you would imagine, it left the kids with significant mental and physical disorders. |
| 1:35.0 | They are now, very sadly, according to prosecutors, having difficulty walking. |
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