Interviews are underway with the 12 girls rescued from a Bucks County home late last week, as authorities work to determine the extent of Lee Kaplan’s alleged abuse and to develop a fuller picture of their years spent living under his roof and largely hidden from the outside world. 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.
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In a related case, authorities almost 100 miles away in Lancaster County arrested the parents of the 18-year-old, with police saying the couple had “gifted” their daughter to Kaplan for helping them out of financial difficulties.
“I just made the call, I just, I don’t know”.
The oldest girl’s father, Daniel Stoltzfus, is charged with conspiracy of statutory sexual assault and children endangerment.
Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler told CNN on Sunday that the Stoltzfuses claimed to be the parents of 10 of the girls, and the grandparents of the remaining two children. The couple are also former members of the Amish religion, according to court documents.
Lee, Daniel, and Savilla are now being held on $1 million bail in the Bucks County Correctional Facility. The children have been placed in foster care in Lancaster County.
Heckler said child advocates, who are trained to talk to kids of different ages about crimes they may have experienced, are interviewing the other children this week.
For years, Jen Betz said, she had been telling her husband that something was off. I never saw them outside playing.
Lower Southampton police said Kaplan told them about two years ago that he also was Amish.
In his booking photo, Kaplan appears with long gray hair and an unkempt beard. So any calls from neighbors about Kaplan’s behavior – and the girls who filled his home – would not necessarily have been child-welfare complaints. “It looks like his own daughter to me”.
Other neighbors told the affiliate the girls didn’t go to school and were rarely let outside.
Removing their then-underage daughter from the protection of the church community and placing her “at the mercy of a worldly man” violates everything the Amish teach about love and family, said Karen Johnson-Weiner, a professor of anthropology at State University of New York, Potsdam, and an expert in Amish family life.
“Stoltzfus stated that his daughter … was “gifted” to Lee Kaplan in thanks for helping his family out of financial ruin”, the affidavit continues. The couple and their children reportedly moved back and forth between Kaplan’s home and a rented farmhouse in Quarryville where a 19-year-old son is living, according to an article on PennLive.com.
As CBS2’s Ali Bauman reported, most of the girls have no birth certificates or any kind of identification.
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The district attorney said the investigation is ongoing and, “We don’t know what we have”.
