Investigators plan to scour a vast patch of land in rural eastern Oklahoma this weekend in search of the body of a baby born to a young girl whose parents were arrested on child abuse charges. Continue reading after the jump.
The girl told authorities her father helped her deliver the child at home, told her it was dead and buried it behind a goat pen. Goats and cows mulled about the property Friday while officials used a backhoe to dig for answers.
LeFlore County District Attorney Jeff Smith said investigators were looking for the infant girl’s body at the vast property outside of Poteau, a town of about 8,500 located about 10 miles from the Arkansas state line. He declined to comment further on the details of the case.
The girl’s parents, who were taken into custody Tuesday in a grocery store parking lot near Mena, Ark., were arrested on multiple charges of child abuse and endangerment. An application for exhumation of a body filed by Smith’s office alleges that one of the nine siblings taken into emergency custody by the state because of “extreme physical and educational neglect” told investigators she and her younger sibling had been sexually abused by their father.
The husband and wife were being held Friday in the LeFlore County Detention Center on $275,000 bond and are awaiting a court date, which Smith said would likely be next week. Smith said he was not aware if either had an attorney, and court records did not indicate that they did.
“All I can say is our investigation is ongoing,” Smith said. “This appears to be a very serious matter and could possibly be a very complicated matter.”
The Associated Press is withholding the names of the parents so as not to identify the children, because the AP does not generally identify the victims of alleged sexual abuse.
One of the siblings told police that she had a baby at home in August 2010 that was delivered by her father. She told authorities she thought a boy she met at camp may have been the baby’s father, according to the exhumation request. The girl told authorities that the child did not cry and that her father told her it was dead. The baby was given a name and then the girl’s father buried it on the property “in the woods behind the goat pen.”
The exhumation report also said a check of records in Oklahoma indicated that neither the child’s birth nor death was reported to the state, as is required.
By Friday afternoon, the country road leading to the home was cordoned off. A black tarp shrouded the area where investigators were working.
