LONGVIEW — A 14-year-old Longview boy allegedly starved by his adoptive parents looked on silently in Cowlitz County Juvenile Court on Wednesday as their attorney argued that the boy should not be allowed to attend public school this fall.
It was the first time the boy had seen his parents,
Jeffrey and Rebecca Trebilcock, since March, when authorities seized him and his siblings at a home in the rural Bunker Hill area west of Longview. Authorities said the Trebilcocks starved their children so badly that some resorted to eating toothpaste and dog food.
A Superior Court order prevents the couple from making contact with their five adopted children, who range from 8 to 14 years of age and who are living in foster homes. And at Wednesday’s hearing, attorneys representing the children and state department of children’s services argued that the Trebilcocks’ children should be sent to public schools.
However, Longview attorney Kurt Anagnostou, who is representing Jeffrey and Rebecca Trebilcock, argued that the children should be home-schooled and receive religious education just as they always have. Anagnostou said Rebecca Trebilcock’s sister is moving to the area from Alaska so she can apply for temporary custody of the children and school them at home.
Attorneys for the children argued that home-schooling already has delayed the children’s educations.
“I think the parents need to take responsibility for why they were behind: the deficits in their home-schooling,” said Eleanor Couto, who represents Cowlitz County Court Appointed Special Advocates, which is involved in the case.
Assistant Attorney General Dana Gigler, who is representing children’s services agency, said the children have been tutored this summer by local teachers. State funding for tutors has dried up, and private schools cost money, she and other state officials said. If the children are not sent to public school, there are no other educational options for them this fall, Gigler said.
Superior Court Judge Gary Bashor said he will take up the question of the children’s educations again next week.
“What I’m inclined to do is have them go some place where there is religious education,” Bashor said. “Putting them in public school is contrary to that.”
Attorneys advocating for the children also asked the court to allow the 14-year-old boy to have contact with a grown biological brother, saying the boy needs the support of a family member — even one he barely remembers from before his adoption.
The state’s attorneys have said that the Trebilcocks have shunned the 14-year-old boy and are no longer interested in parenting him.
That’s “not true,” Anagnostou said Wednesday. “They miss him. They want all their children returned to their household. … My clients are still the parents of these children.”
Anagnostou said the Trebilcocks object to the boy contacting his biological brother. He said the Trebilcocks, not state social workers, should be the ones to decide whom their children can see. Judge Bashor said he would address the question of contact with the biological sibling next week as well.
In addition, Bashor set a date of March 12 for a civil trial to determine whether the children will become wards of the state.
The Trebilcocks also face criminal charges of first- and second-degree criminal mistreatment of their five adopted children. A trial in that case has been set for January in Cowlitz County Superior Court.
Sheriff’s investigators said that all five of the Trebilcock’s adopted children were found this spring to be malnourished and underweight.
Anagnostou has filed a motion in Superior Court asking a judge to lift the no-contact order barring the Trebilcocks from seeing their adopted children. “My clients desperately need to see their children and believe their children need to see them,” the motion said.
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