When police showed up last week at Lee Kaplan’s home in the Philadelphia suburbs, they found a dozen girls living there, the eldest of whom was an 18-year-old who authorities say had been “gifted” to him by her parents as repayment for a debt.
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The oldest girl was allegedly “given” to Kaplan by her Lancaster County parents as a gift when she was 14, police said. This news organization is not identifying the couple in an effort to protect the identity of their daughter, who is now 18 and has a 3-year-old and a 6-month old daughter with Kaplan, as well as her nine sisters who also were found in the home.
“I’ve ridden by this house (and) I’ve seen young girls, various ages of children, dressed mostly in Amish clothing”, Horst said.
“It needs to be out there that this is not something that went unsaid”, Rihl said. It’s unclear how or if the other girls are related. He stepped outside to talk with us briefly – just a few days after his parents were arrested and several of his siblings and nieces were rescued from Lee Kaplan’s Bucks County home. Rihl said he had met with two detectives and a former police chief.
Jen Betz told the Associated Press she called authorities because was concerned about young girls living in the house with boarded windows and high weeds.
Lower Southampton police said Kaplan told them about two years ago that he also was Amish.
“This one time, back in October, they were all outside near the street, and that guy came out”, Horst recalled.
Police in the USA state of Pennsylvania have discovered 12 girls in residence of a man, who was later accused of sexually assaulting one teenager among the girls, local media reported on Monday.
Kaplan and the Stoltzfuses are each being held on $1m bail.
Daniel Stoltzfus is now facing charges of conspiracy to commit statutory sexual assault and children endangerment, while his wife, Savilla, is facing charges of endangering the welfare of a child. The couple told investigators that they offered their daughter in exchange for money they needed to fund their farm in rural Lancaster County, noting that Kaplan “saved them from financial ruin”. We will make them as carefully and consistently as we can. But the internet and her parents’ assumptions were wrong: Pennsylvania’s age of consent is 16, and children ages 13 to 15 can consent to sex only with partners no more than four years older than them.
Neighbors had contacted authorities, but those calls didn’t result in property searches.
Kaplan wracked up his fair share of charges. I mean we didn’t get child-abuse calls there, so if it was a child-abuse call, we would have responded, naturally.
The girls have been kept together in the care of county social services workers, Heckler said.
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Betz told philly.com that everything about Kaplan was “creepy” and that she called child welfare officials.
