Parents Charged With Child Neglect For Forcing 16-Year-Old To Live Outside In Filth For Years

There are some things that happen in life that you read about that defy understanding. Bizarre people and situations that leave you totally perplexed, because there is absolutely no explanation as to why they would do what they did.

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Take a Miami, Florida couple, their 16-year-old daughter and their truly strange existence for 8 years. 62-year-old Philipe Mathieu and his 42-year-old wife Sherrine owned a duplex in Little Haiti. One of the units was immaculately clean, with decent furniture, hot water, electricity and a large TV. The other unit was filthy, with barely a thing inside.

There are jugs with dark water, plastic bags, garbage and mildew,'' said Miami Police spokesman Delrish Moss. ``The smell was horrible.''

But the Mathieu family didn't live in either the clean or the filthy unit, they lived outside, in their yard where they would use a garden hose to wash themselves and plastic containers for their bodily waste. Their makeshift bed was their small red Pontiac Grand Am, which all three would share. The bed was

.. shielded from view by a tarp covering the chain-link fence on the property's north side and a strategically parked Ford Windstar van in front. Several other cars on the property also obscured the Grand Am.

They had been living like that for eight years (since the girl was 8), until they were arrested and charged with '863 counts of child neglect.'

The reason they lived that way is just as bizarre as the situation itself. If you can even call it a reason.

His wife, Philipe Mathieu told police, cleaned compulsively and wouldn't let her husband or family inside their home on the 6300 block of Northwest First Court.

Moss said Philipe Mathieu told investigators he allowed the situation because ``he didn't want to have problems with his wife.''

``The girl said that's the part of the duplex they use in case [the Department of Children and Families] comes looking,'' Moss said.

Obviously the mother is deeply disturbed, and compulsive cleaning sounds like a symptom of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). But then why was only one unit clean, and for show only, while the other one was filthy and the whole family, including the mum, lived in squalor. And the mother wasn't much of a mother since the girl would clean her own clothes at a laundromat with part of her 40 cent per day allowance.

Authorities were called in after reports of abuse, and the girl is now with the DCF and is waiting to be placed into the foster care system. The parents obviously need some therapy, as will the daughter. But this is one of those cases that you just have to wonder "why?"

Source: Miami Herald , NBC Miami