A Wisconsin teen weighing just 35 pounds was rescued from a house of horrors where her grossly obese family allegedly kept her prisoner for years and ironically withheld food as punishment.
The girl was so emaciated that she was mistaken for a 6 year old when police pulled her from the Oneida trailer where she lived with her biological father, 47-year-old Walter Goodman, and his wife and her family.
Goodman called 9-11 dispatchers on Aug. 21 asking for help when his daughter became violently sick and “comatose” after going days without food, with the dad claiming she was “autistic” and had refused to eat for days.
Responders found the girl close to death, and rushed her to the hospital where she was diagnosed with multiple organ dysfunctions, cardia dysfunction, pancreatitis, severe hepatitis, and severe malnutrition among other complications, court documents obtained by Fox 11 News showed.
“She looked like a skeleton,” said Outagamie County assistant district attorney Julie DuQuaine. “She was just literally skin and bones at 35 pounds.”
Despite Goodman’s claims that the girl had done this to herself, evidence soon suggested he and his rotund family may have been the ones behind it.
“If she misbehaves, I’m not going to feed her today,” Walter allegedly once told a friend, according to court documents. “I keep her locked up in her bedroom with a camera on her, and that’s where she stays.”
And text messages between Walter and his wife — Melissa Goodman, 51 — and her daughter and daughter’s girlfriend — Savanna Lefever and Kayla Stemler, 29 and 28 — also suggested an environment of severe of abuse, according to prosecutors.
“Just so you know [the girl] was taking more than one bite at a time and when Savanna confronted her, she continued to argue with her, so I used the belt,” Stemler wrote in one text to her girlfriend’s mother — who responded with “fine.”
In other texts, the family talked about how much they disliked the teen, who moved in with them in 2020 after her biological mother was sent to prison.
“Wish she’d just go away,” the girl’s stepmother wrote at one point.
“I just want to karate kick her dumb head,” LaFever responded.
Her father even shared similar disdain for his own daughter to a friend, who recalled him telling her things like “I wish I could kill you.”
“If I could leave her somewhere in the woods, I’d leave her,” Goodman allegedly once said.
And the family allegedly followed through on their disdain for the girl — locking her in a bedroom without a mattress, preventing her from leaving her room or playing outside for years, and beating her and depriving her of food and water as punishment, according to prosecuting documents.
“This is the most egregious case of child neglect I think I have ever seen in my nearly 25-year career,” said DuQuaine.
