Oklahoma Woman Allegedly Fed Her Children Dog Feces, Starved Them

An Oklahoma woman who was accused of starving her children and feeding them dog feces will appear before a judge Wednesday.

Mary Elizabeth Moore, 34, of Delaware County, was charged with two counts of felony child neglect, after her 5-year-old and 3-year-old children were hospitalized at the intensive care unit in Saint Francis Hospital, Tulsa. According to court documents, obtained by local news outlets, the older child weighed 26 pounds while the younger sibling weighed about 18 pounds.

It was not clear when Moore was arrested from her home. She remained in police custody Tuesday, on a $100,000 bond.

According to Delaware County deputy sheriff Tracy Shaw, when Moore was brought in for questioning after her arrest, she denied starving her children, claiming she had not taken them to a hospital because she had a meeting with the Department of Human Services. She added that she “had been dealing with DHS” since her daughter – the older child – was a year old and “did not have an issue with DHS at all until I got with my husband.”

"Mary said they [DHS] hospitalized her kids over losing half a pound," the affidavit read.

In the middle of the interrogation, she reportedly became agitated. “As the investigator got around to the actual allegations, she became very upset and walked out of the interview,” Shaw said. “If somebody had not reported this, the hospital records and the child abuse expert that examined them in Tulsa stated that they would probably be dead.”

Shaw called it an “extreme case of child neglect, one of the worst that I’ve seen,” adding that the kids were "so malnourished that hospital staff had to place them on a special diet,” applying “nasal feeding tubes to both children.”

The affidavit stated that the children were diagnosed with “re-feeding syndrome before beginning to gain weight.” The cause of their extreme weight loss was determined to be “protein-calorie malnutrition" and "not being provided enough calories.”

The daughter had pinworms in her stool, which are sometimes caused due to the lack of hygiene. Both the children were placed under the state’s care following their mother’s arrest.

When the children were questioned by the DHS at the hospital, the 5-year-old girl said she was often spanked and that her mother’s boyfriend sometimes threw bottles at her sibling. She added she also witnessed their mother and her boyfriend engage in inappropriate behavior, Tulsa World reported.

The children also opened up about the inhuman diet that their mother subjected them to. “While DHS was at the hospital and speaking with one of the children, the child disclosed that she was alleged being fed dog feces,” Shaw said.

“DHS records indicate a long withstanding history of failure to thrive cases brought up against Mary [Moore],” the affidavit stated. The Delaware County Sheriff's Office said that this was the first complaint against Moore that had been brought to their attention.