Texas mother, boyfriend arrested after children escape house of torture

A 16-year-old girl and her twin brother managed to escape from their Texas home on Tuesday where they had allegedly been forced to live in squalor in the laundry room by their mother, Zaikiya Duncan, and her boyfriend, Jova Terrell.

Duncan and Terrell fled to Louisiana with the twins' five other siblings, but were apprehended following the release of an Amber Alert, and sent back to Texas on Thursday. 

According to KHOU, the twins made their escape at 5 am Tuesday morning, going door to door in their ritzy neighborhood pleading for help.

Many refused to let them in, unaware of the situation, however after about thirty minutes the teens were granted entry to the home of a single mother who noticed their condition and jumped into action.

"They were so skinny and so frail," the woman told KHOU. "They told me that their mom kept them locked in the laundry room, naked, zip tied from the ankles and handcuffed from the wrist."

The twins revealed to investigators that their mother had also refused to let them use the toilet and made them drink their own urine.

After an extended period in these conditions, the teens were visibly malnourished and had scars, bruises, and cuts all over their bodies.

The woman called police, but by the time they arrived, Duncan and Terrell had already driven away with the teens' five siblings. An Amber Alert was issued, and the pair were eventually located with one of the children; the other four were later found with a relative in Louisiana. All seven have since been placed in the custody of Child Protective Services.

According to what the teens told the woman who took them in, their mother would "only feed them a sandwich … if they were quiet the whole day," adding that "if they made any type of noise they wouldn’t be fed."

"How a mother could do this to her kids?" she wondered aloud.

As of Thursday morning, no official charges have been filed against Duncan or Terrell over their alleged treatment of the teens.

Duncan has a history of child abuse. A decade ago, she was arrested and charged after authorities discovered that her then 5-year-old had burns and bruises all over his body. A baby was also found with its hands bound.