Autistic Woman Caged At Home, Forced To Eat Mother’s Ashes, Dog Feces

Five people in Amite, Louisiana, were charged Thursday after they allegedly forced an autistic family member to live in a cage, inflicting both physical and verbal torture on the female victim for almost a year.

Raylaine Knope, 42, Terry J. Knope II, 45, Jody Lambert, 23, Taylor Knope, 20, and Bridget Lambert, 21, were handed a six-count indictment, including one count of attempted sex trafficking, one count of hate crime and one count of conspiring to obtain the forced labor of the 22-year-old victim, who was identified in the court documents as D.P, CBS-affiliated WWL TV reported.

The horrific crimes against D.P. came to light after the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office executed a search warrant at a house on Rushing Lane, Amite, in 2016 after investigators received a complaint the people living there kept a woman locked in a cage.

D.P., who is related to Raylaine, moved into a mobile home at 57509 Rushing Lane in August of 2015, after her mother died and that is when the accused started torturing her, investigators believe.

Initially, D.P. was allowed to sleep on a mattress on the floor of the house. However, later on, she was moved to an outdoor shed which Taylor and Jody locked every night. Two years ago, the family constructed a makeshift cage, made out of chicken wire and a plastic tarp, which resembled a dog kennel, forcing her to live in it.

All her belongings were kept inside the cage and she was given a bucket to use as bathroom. D.P. was malnourished and had numerous insect bites when the police found her.

The prosecutors alleged the cage was "to maintain control over her and to prevent her from escaping" while she was forced to do household and yard chores, the Advocate reported.

When she did not carry out her job properly, she was physically assaulted by the family members. Terry would choke and kick her while Raylaine threw canned goods at her. One of the incidents involved Bridget holding D.P.'s arm as Terry burned her hand with a cigarette lighter, which was meant as punishment for "talking back" to Raylaine.

D.P. was seriously hurt during one of the more gruesome punishments when she was hit on the head with a wood board. Even though she bled badly at the time, the members refused to take her to the hospital, fearing their abuses might be discovered and chose to close her wound with glue instead.

Apart from that, she was forced to eat dog feces, served on bread and her own mother’s ashes mixed in a bowl of milk. She was also forced to strip naked in order to sexually please men and simulate sexual intercourse with a jalapeno, the court records said.

There was no end to her plight as family members took turns to hold her head underwater in a bath tub, threatening to shoot her if she tried to escape, and dumping buckets of urine and feces on her.

She also endured verbal torture. In one of the instances cited in the documents, Terry called her a "retard" who "deserved to die," after shooting her with a pellet gun at close range.

The family were planning to shift D.P. into a different location in order to use her for prostitution.