Millions watched her kids on YouTube. Off-screen, she was beating and starving them.
They cast spells and engage in Nerf wars. They go on a “cookie capture mission,” suspending themselves over a granite countertop in a handsome suburban kitchen to swipe their sister’s baked goods.
The siblings who appear in the blithe family comedy series “Fantastic Adventures,” which has garnered nearly 800,000 subscribers and hundreds of millions of views on YouTube, exude wonderment and youthful joie de vivre.
When the camera wasn’t rolling, however, police say the seven adopted children were being starved and sequestered for days in a closet with a bare tile floor. Its color evoked a green room, almost like a staging area for their performances. They were being pepper-sprayed and beaten with belts, brushes and hangers. They were forced to take ice baths. They were required to stand with their arms raised above their heads from dawn until midnight. On more than one occasion, at least one of the boys bled when the tip of his penis was pinched.
The perpetrator of this catalogue of abuse, according to a statement of probable cause prepared last week, was their adoptive mother, Machelle Hackney, 48, who goes by her maiden name Hobson and runs the “Fantastic Adventures” channel, which has more than 250 million views. The channel started in 2012 and features 10- to 15-minute videos of the children engaging in various make-believe scenarios, involving everything from zombies to spiders to s’mores. Several new videos appear each month. At the end of the segments, the children face the camera and ask viewers to like and subscribe.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/03/20/millions-watched-her-kids-youtube-off-screen-she-was-beating-starving-them-police-say/?utm_term=.594bc67bae81
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