Mum arrested for keeping 14-year-old twin sons under house arrest, starving them for 9 years

A mum was arrested for allegedly keeping her twin sons – now 14 – under house arrest for 9 years and and starving them in a “shocking, horrifying form of child abuse,” prosecutors said.

Lissette Soto Domenech, 64, who lives in the Bronx, New York, allegedly starved the two boys and kept them indoors in their Riverdale home between November 3, 2016, and October 15, 2025, the Bronx District Attorney’s Office charged.

A child protective specialist from the city’s Administration for Children’s Services showed up at the Mosholu Avenue home on the October date and called 911 after receiving several anonymous complaints, the DA’s office said.

When investigators found the boys, one of them weighed 54 pounds and the other only 51, and both were well below the normal height for their age, according to prosecutors.

One of the boys, who is autistic, apparently was never evaluated or received services – and only infant cereal, baby bottles and toddler toys could be found in the apartment, with no age-appropriate food or items in sight, prosecutors said.

FDNY EMTs took the boys to Montefiore Children’s Hospital where they required treatment for three months.

A neighbor told The Post that she believed Domenech wanted her sons “to stay babies forever.”

“I believe she didn’t want her kids to grow up… She desperately wanted a baby… In the early days when we first came to this building, she got into tears. I said, ‘Have you got a family?’ And she got tearful and said, ‘No, not yet.’”

Beginning in November of 2016, Domenech allegedly stopped taking the boys to a doctor – and in September 2017 began submitting false documents to the city’s Department of Education claiming she homeschooled them, the DA’s office said.

Domenech’s husband — the twins’ father — recently di£d and had had a strained relationship with his wife for several years, but was a very friendly man who “loved his kids,” multiple neighbors told The Post Wednesday night, Jan. 21.

The father told one neighbor in the Riverdale co-op building that he wanted to keep the children home because “the world’s crazy.”

“He told me ‘My kids never leave the house’ and that they’re homeschooled. He said he doesn’t trust the world, like he’s afraid, he said ‘the world’s crazy,” the neighbor recalled of a conversation with the dad.

Another neighbor said that when the boys were younger, the dad would show her pictures of his sons and talk about how “bright” they were

“He was so proud of them,” she recalled.

But at some point, the couple’s relationship soured and the father no longer lived with Domenech and his children, the building’s other residents observed.

“And then everyone was worried about the kids not being taken out … She was bringing up the children,”  the neighbor said, adding that their mother seemed “a little nutty.”

Domenech was arraigned Tuesday, Jan. 20, on charges of first-degree assault, reckless endangerment, endangering the welfare of a child and offering a false instrument for filing, prosecutors said.

Bronx Supreme Court Justice Audrey Stone ordered her held on $25,000 cash bail or $75,000 bond.

“This defendant is accused of a shocking, horrifying form of child abuse, allegedly depriving her sons of proper food, social interaction, education, medical attention,” District Attorney Darcel Clark said in a statement. “We will do everything we can to help these boys attain a normal life.”

Domenech is due to face a judge again on February 4.