An Oklahoma couple is facing multiple charges of child neglect and sexual abuse after their 11-year-old daughter gave birth to a baby that a DNA test shows is 99.9% likely fathered by the stepfather.
The girl’s stepfather, Dustin Walker, 34, and her biological mother, Cherie Walker, 33, were initially arrested by Muskogee Police Department officers and charged with one count of felony child neglect each after she gave birth at home on Aug. 16, according to court records cited by NBC News.
A local hospital called police at around 5:45 p.m. on Aug. 16 after the girl was brought in for care approximately one hour after giving birth in a home she shared with five other siblings. Dustin Walker was later proven to be the father of the child following DNA testing by the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation. He was additionally charged with sexual abuse of a child younger than 12, while the girl’s mother was charged with enabling child sexual abuse, Fox 25 reported. They are being held at the Muskogee County Jail.
Muskogee County Assistant District Attorney Janet Hutson told 2 News she was horrified to learn what happened to the young girl.
“I was horror-stricken to find out it’s an 11-year-old little girl who’s given birth,” she said. “And that she had no medical care, and she had no one to be with her.”
Neighbor Cheryl Adkins told the news outlet that the 11-year-old and her siblings had been exposed to unstable and unsanitary conditions in the home and she made several attempts to alert the authorities and is now worried help has come too late.
“They have [had] no running water for the last two or three years,” she said. “They have dogs in the house. They have cats in the house, six children.”
Prior to the DNA results being made public, a woman who only gave her name as Michelle and identified herself as the children’s grandmother, attempted to blame the girl’s pregnancy on a neighborhood boy while defending the couple.
“She keeps telling us that it was a little 12-year-old that I used to babysit,” Michelle said of her granddaughter’s explanation for the pregnancy. “She keeps telling everybody that it was him. They got curious. That’s all I know.”
Michelle further stated her daughter and son-in-law aren’t monsters while insisting that “They love those children.”
She also blamed the family’s pets for the unsanitary conditions in the home described by neighbors.
“We have animals, and so sometimes there’s trash on the floor because the dogs get into the trash,” she said. “It gets cleaned up. Right now, it’s probably a mess because the animals are in there. We try to let them out, but they try to keep it clean.”
Hutson called the abuse of the 11-year-old girl, “one of the most if not the most serious child sexual abuse and neglect cases I have ever prosecuted,” in a statement to NBC News.
All the couple’s children have been removed from their care, and they are facing a total of six counts of felony child neglect, including failing to provide the pregnant child with adequate medical care and supervision when she gave birth at home. They are also facing counts of child neglect for their other children, ages 2, 4, 6, 7 and 9.
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