Police rescue two naked, feces-covered children in suspected case of neglect
Officers find 3- and 4-year-olds running in the street; mother and man arrested after drugs found in their home
Police on Sunday found two children walking in the street outside a home in Petah Tikva nearly naked and covered in feces.
Officers, who arrived at the scene after worried neighbors called for help, entered the home and found it in a severely dilapidated state.
Police said the walls, the furniture and other parts of the house were covered in human excrement. Officers also found drugs.
Inside the home, they found a sleeping 33-year-old man, who said he was not the children’s father and that he did not know where the 31-year-old mother was. She was located and detained shortly thereafter.
Welfare services were called to the house to take the children and place them in the care of a relative of their mother.
Both the man and the woman were arrested for suspected severe physical and psychological neglect. A court extended their detention by three days.
Investigators revealed that it was not the first time the children were found in a neglected state and that the family is known to welfare services.
“This is a shocking and serious case,” a source involved in the case told the Ynet news site. “It is not clear where the welfare services were, and how they cared for the helpless children, who had reached this point of neglect.”