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KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Provo couple arrested for alleged severe child abuse.
- Children removed from home; police reported finding evidence of physical abuse and neglect.
PROVO ā A Provo couple was arrested Wednesday and accused of severely abusing their children.
Darren Justin Berriel, 35, and Rachelle Southwick, 32, were each booked into the Utah County Jail for investigation of aggravated child abuse: Berriel for seven counts and Southwick for one.
Police say the couple’s children had already been removed from the home and were interviewed by police in June.
“It was disclosed that one child witnessed Rachelle stomp on another sibling’s arm and sprain her arm. The witnessing child observed her sibling ‘crying bloody murder,'” according to a police booking affidavit. “A child also disclosed Rachelle biting their back with her teeth, making them bleed.”
Southwick also stabbed a child with a screwdriver, the affidavit alleges.
One child also recalled a time when Berriel was “punching them in the face, knocking a tooth loose, and knocking them unconscious, stomping on their back causing pain, locking them in a room for days without food or bathroom usage. The child reported having to urinate on the floor of the locked room,” according to the affidavit.
“Additional reports of Darren hitting their face and neck with a belt, suffocating a child with a pillow, and being beaten with a black pole on their legs, causing tiger stripe marks on their lower extremities, were also documented. The child also reported being treated like a dog, being put in a kennel and having to eat dog food,” the arrest report says.
Investigators collected medical reports for the children and found that one child was missing a tooth next to another tooth that was chipped, which the child “reported Darren caused with pliers,” the affidavit states. Police served a search warrant on the home on Wednesday, “and several evidentiary items, including two screwdrivers with blood on them, were collected from the home.”
Three children between the ages of 8 and 10 were removed from the home.
Correction: An earlier version incorrectly listed the couple’s ages as 25 and 22 instead of 35 and 32.
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