HOUSE OF HORRORS

Escaped Siblings Say Mom Handcuffed Them in the Laundry, Forced Them to Drink Bleach

The emaciated, half-clothed 16-year-old twins found the keys to the handcuffs, hid them in their mouth, then made a run for their lives before dawn on Tuesday.

A pair of Texas twins who made a daring escape on Tuesday have described in horrific detail the torture they were allegedly subjected to by their mom and her boyfriend. The emaciated, half-clothed 16-year-old brother and sister, who had been handcuffed to a dolly in the house’s laundry, found the keys to the cuffs in their mom’s purse, hid it in their mouth, then made a run for their lives before dawn on Tuesday, desperately knocking on neighbors’ doors until one took them in. According to court documents obtained by KHOU, the twins told police that their mom, Zaikiya Duncan, would often pour bleach down their throats and on their genitals until it burned their skin, make them drink Lysol if they “talked too much,” beat them with curtain rods and poles, force them to defecate on themselves and eat it, and only fed them only one to three times a week. After the teens escaped, Duncan and her boyfriend, Joya Terrell, fled to Baton Rouge with her five other sons, aged 8 to 14, but they were tracked down hours later. Duncan and Terrell are both charged with assault offenses.