Lake County authorities on Thursday charged a man and his wife with horrendous acts of sexual abuse against two children living in their home in unincorporated Antioch last year.
The husband and wife are both being held in Lake County Jail on a $1 million bond.
In detailing the investigation, authorities were reluctant to have the names of the two adults made public to protect the identities of the children, who were living with the couple. Authorities were unclear on the precise familial relationship of the adults to the children.
The victims are a 9-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl. Between July and September of 1995, police say, the children were repeatedly abused in the home by the couple, a 46-year-old automobile salesman and his wife, also 46.
An unidentified person ended the alleged incidents by calling the Department of Children and Family Services child abuse hot line, which in turn called the Lake County Children’s Advocacy Center, according to Lake County State’s Atty. Mike Waller.
In response, an investigation was launched and it led to the arrest of the couple, according to Lt. Rick Ekenstahler of the Lake County Sheriff’s Police Department. The husband has been charged with eight counts of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child and eight counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault.
The wife was charged with four counts of predatory criminal sexual assault and four counts of aggravated criminal sexual assault.
The husband had been convicted in May 1995 for aggravated criminal sex abuse in Kendall County for an incident involving a child who was living with the couple in December 1994, according to Assistant State’s Atty. Jean Fletcher. Authorities say it is unclear whether that child is one of the alleged victims in Lake County.
He was sentenced to two years’ probation and ordered to have no contact with that child. After that incident, the wife assured officials that she was “throwing him out of the house,” according to Martha Allen, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services.
In the months that followed, the agency was unable to contact the woman and “subsequently the case was closed,” Allen said.
“One would believe that the system failed these youngsters,” Ekenstahler said. “There was some very sick stuff going on there.”
On Thursday, investigators assigned to the advocacy center were searching a self-storage facility in Oswego for more evidence, including photographs of sex acts that may have been taken by the adults, he said.
Even without the photos, Waller said, the alleged sex abuse acts involved “everything from A to Z.”
Meanwhile, the children are in DCFS custody, which has placed them in foster care.
Ekenstahler said three detectives worked aggressively to close the case: Mike Leusch of the Waukegan Police Department; Doug Hess from the Grayslake Police Department; and Len Brezenski of the sheriff’s department. Initially, they were hard-pressed to get information from the male suspect. His wife, though, was cooperative and “pretty much implicated him and herself.”
If convicted, the pair could receive a maximum 120 years in prison.
