US couple accused of abusing Pinoy twins

An American couple was accused of abusing 16-year-old Filipino twins at their home, the news site KGW.com said on Thursday (US time). However, the report said Jeffrey Weller has pleaded not guilty to five counts of second-degree assault and two counts of unlawful imprisonment. Meanwhile, his wife, Sandra, did not enter a plea and requested for a competency evaluation instead. The Wellers were slapped with the charges last week, after the police stepped in their home and found about their maltreatment of the adopted twins. Court documents show that the Wellers locked up the twins at home for years, beat them up frequently, and fed them only once a day. Abuses The twins were quoted in an affidavit that “for as long as they can recall, food in the home has been under lock and key." The situation forced the teenagers to steal food from neighbors, which led to several bouts of physical abuse when they were caught. The couple “forced them to take off their pants and underwear and lie on the kitchen floor, while Jeff Weller beat them with a 42-inch wooden stick, often making them bleed," the Daily Mail UK reported. Meanwhile, in July—a month after Jeffrey Weller won custody of his sons—his grandmother told the court that his wife lifted one of the boys on “the wall by his throat," adding that the boy “could not do anything except to stay in his room" for an entire month. According to KGW.com, court documents revealed that the children “were caught in the middle of a nasty divorce and custody battle," while the twins “were often the targets of racist remarks." During their visit early this month, Child Protective Services learned about the situation, which prosecutors referred to as “torturous." The Wellers told an officer that the twins seemed emaciated because they were Filipino, while “they blamed the locks and filthy conditions on the children." Arrest Authorities have received eight referrals about the case as early as 2004, all expressing concern over the twins, a boy and a girl, who were adopted by Sandra Weller and her ex-husband, Tim Graf, when they were only two years old. According to Daily Mail UK, the 16-year-old girl finally admitted to the abuse on Oct. 5 by slipping a note “to an authority figure," launching the ninth investigation on the matter. () Two days later, child welfare workers removed the twins from the house, along with four other children: