Two Augusta County teenage girls, ages 15 and 16, have been removed from their father and stepmother’s custody. Those guardians, Steven Tomlin, 35, and Heather Tomlin, 27, have been charged with two counts of cruelty and injury to a child.
According to Augusta police investigator Paul McCormick, police received a call from a school friend who had heard the girls talking about conditions at home and said police should check it out. Police visited the home February 23. They found two bare rooms, each with only a mattress and box spring. The locks on the doors had been reversed to lock from the outside and the windows had been nailed shut. Each room was equipped with a portable camping toilet. The smell was “overwhelming,” McCormick says.
The girls told police they had at some point been locked in their rooms for 100 days or more. The girls were allowed to go to school, but were confined to their rooms as a form of punishment.
 Heather and Steven Tomlin are accused of locking up their teen girls for 100 or more days. |
The Staunton News Leader reports that Steven Tomlin has had previous complaints of domestic abuse. He was arrested in 1999 when his first wife, Angela Tomlin, reported that her husband had bound her hands and feet with tape, spit on her and held her down. She filed a protective order, but the case was later dismissed. And no criminal charges were filed in an incident four years earlier in which Angela said Tomlin had broken her nose, the News Leader reports.
During the 1997-98 school year, the girls missed 55 days of school. Steven Tomlin received a 10-day suspended sentence for contributing to the delinquency of minors. But he got custody of the girls after his divorce from Angela Tomlin in 2003, according to the News Leader.
The News Leader also reported that a third child, age 7, resided at the house occasionally. He has been reported as Heather Tomlin’s son.
The Tomlins are out on $5,000 bond each. The girls are in protective custody.
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