An Anchorage couple who held their two teenage daughters out of school and kept them in the basement of a squalid house for years will serve about two months in confinement after pleading no contest to neglect and contributing to the delinquency of minor earlier this month.
Patricia Haugstad-Hogan, 56, and Timothy Hogan, 49, will also serve five years' informal probation, meaning no probation officer will be assigned to the case, as part of the sentencing agreement. The couple also agreed to abide by any orders from the state Office of Children's Services as far as contact with their children.
Police arrested the couple in early March, about two months after their daughters appeared at Covenant House in downtown Anchorage. The girls were running away from home and described filthy living conditions to police officers. Police eventually obtained search warrants and reported a home filled with garbage and lacking heat or power.
Neither girl had ever been to public school. They told police they felt trapped inside the house. Their parents lived in a trailer in the driveway.
State prosecutors said there wasn't enough evidence in the case to press felony charges against Haugstad-Hogan nor Hogan, as far as signs of severe malnourishment or physical injury. City prosecutors pressed misdemeanor neglect charges instead, which prohibit an adult from allowing a child to live in an unsanitary environment and placing the child in circumstances that posed a "substantial" risk of injury. The insufficient schooling led to charges of contributing to a delinquency of a minor.
Haugstad-Hogan and Hogan each pleaded no contest to a count of each charge, and prosecutors dropped the other two counts. The couple has been ordered to report July 26 to an Anchorage halfway house to start serving the sentence.
Neither Haugstad-Hogan nor Hogan had prior criminal history. An attorney for the couple, Jon Buchholdt, called the sentence a "fair resolution" during the court hearing.
In an interview, city prosecutor Seneca Theno said the sentence reflected the prosecution's effort to "balance the horror with the concept of, 'You need to get your stuff together and you need to stay on the right path.'
"Certainly our long-term concern (was) … is someone going to be able to help these girls?" Theno said.
Christy Lawton, the director of the Office of Children's Services, declined to provide specifics about her agency's involvement in the case.
She said that in general, OCS puts together a case plan and a plan for family contact. The plans tend to evolve as the agency and others involved in the case get to know the family better, Lawton said.
Lawton said that OCS, through a court order, can decide to end parental visitations if the agency or mental health professionals decide such visits are detrimental to the children's treatment.