--- RCookHook(AT)aol.com wrote:
> Wash. Man Accused of Abusing Wife
>
> .c The Associated Press
>
> EVERETT, Wash. (AP) -- A man has been arrested for
> allegedly beating and
> starving his disabled wife for 17 years, hiding her
> from the world on a
> decrepit sailboat.
>
> Victor Matthew David, 59, was arrested Tuesday on
> assault charges and jailed
> on $150,000 bail. He could get up to 10 years in
> prison.
>
> In 1997, police were called to the couple's sailboat
> by a social worker who
> was trying to determine whether David was
> fraudulently collecting his wife's
> disability checks. She has multiple sclerosis.
>
> Police found Linda David, 50, wearing filthy,
> vomit-stained clothes in a room
> covered with dog feces, according to court papers.
>
> She was almost blind and barely able to speak. Her
> face was badly scarred,
> and her arms had been broken and had healed without
> medical attention.
>
> ``I've talked to some of the officers who were
> involved at the time,'' olice
> spokesman Elliot Woodall said Tuesday, ``and they
> said that it was among the
> worst conditions they'd ever seen a human living
> in.''
>
> Mrs. David, who is now recovering in a nursing home,
> said: ``No way I could
> get off (the boat) to get help. That was home. I
> never had anywhere else.''
>
> Prosecutors said David wasn't arrested for 2 1/2
> more years because of the
> difficulty in building a case. He had kept his wife
> so well-hidden that
> neighbors thought she did not really exist,
> prosecutors said.
>
> David said any injuries his wife suffered came when
> she fell out of a truck.
>
>
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