Olivia Atkocaitis: Teen sues adoptive parents who kept her in dungeon, used her as SLAVE for years
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NEW HAMPSHIRE, NEW ENGLAND: A 19-year-old Chinese native woman is seeking justice in a lawsuit filed against her adoptive parents who allegedly used her as a slave and subjected her to confinement and child abuse for years. Olivia Atkocaitis was abused by her parents, Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis, who reportedly kept her in a "dungeon, beaten, starved, forced her to use a bucket as a toilet," and "treated her like a slave."
The lawsuit is also suing several New Hampshire government agencies for ignoring her situation despite one of her siblings - one of the Atkocaitis' biological children - reporting the abuse in their home. The 70-page lawsuit names the New Boston police, a nonprofit Massachusetts adoption agency, and the local school district for not aiding the child when they could have saved her years of suffering.
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Who is Olivia Atkocaitis?
Olivia was placed in the care of Atkocaitis by Wide Horizons for Children, despite his biological children telling the agency that their father had beaten them with a belt. Olivia was allegedly kept in a "dungeon" and beaten, starved, and forced to do chores for the family, including caring for the animals on the property and clearing their manure. She was permitted to attend school for only one day. In 2011, the couple's teenager allegedly told a school counselor that Olivia, who was eight at the time, had been whipped, starved, and pushed down the stairs.
Police were sent to the home and noticed an 8-by-8-foot room in the house where Olivia was kept. The small room was less than 100 square feet and had one window that was covered with chicken-wire mesh. The incident was reported to the Division for Children, Youth and Families, and the couple's teenager was removed from the house but Olivia remained. "It did not offer the same protections to Olivia, a younger child, a girl, a racial and ethnic minority, even after Thomas and Denise Atkocaitis admitted to police that they had locked her in a basement dungeon," the lawsuit reads.
Police returned Olivia to servitude whenever she tried to escape
Even after Olivia attempted to escape multiple times, she was repeatedly hunted down by the police without anyone probing the cause. "When Olivia attempted to escape, as she did repeatedly as a child, local police hunted her down, reprimanded her for escaping, and returned her to servitude. During her last effort at escape, the police used dogs to track her," the suit states. Thomas and Denise were initially arrested and charged in 2018 after Olivia escaped. Authorities claimed the couple locked the girl in the "dungeon" room that was rigged with an alarm if she tried to escape.
Denise pleaded guilty to a felony criminal restraint but managed to avoid prison time. Meanwhile, Thomas pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment and served a minimal jail sentence. Both later moved to different places and sold the house in October 2019. "We are reviewing the filing and will respond as appropriate in court in the ordinary course of litigation," said Michael Garrity, a spokesman for Attorney General John Formella.