

Jennifer Wolfthal, Florida children’s book author & husband, Joseph Wolfthal to serve 10-12 years for abuse & neglect of 3 adoptive kids in plea deal.
A Florida children’s book author and her husband will spend at least a decade in prison for the ongoing abuse and neglect their three adoptive children.
Jennifer Wolfthal, 45, and her husband Joseph Wolfthal, 43, pleaded guilty on Monday to aggravated child abuse and neglect with great bodily harm, and will serve 12 years and 10 years, respectively, following a plea agreement.
The years-long campaign of abuse included beating the children with a ‘whacker’, forcing them to write lines, and feeding them only a mixture of cereal and vegetable puree.
Children’s house of horrors
The adoptive parents’ crimes were uncovered on New Year’s Day in 2021 after Joseph took their ‘critically ill’ 8 year old adopted daughter to hospital.
She was found to have been suffering a litany of medical emergencies including kidney and liver failure, sepsis, a staph infection, open infected wounds on both legs and pneumonia in both lungs.
A probable cause affidavit reported by Law and Crime added that she suffered sores on her leg that were infected and had ruptured, had a chipped tooth, two black eyes and weighed just 40lbs.
Joseph Wolfthal initially tried to claim the daughter he took to hospital sustained her injuries by falling over and ‘brushing her teeth too hard’, which detectives quickly dismissed due to her age and condition.
But there was more to come. During their investigations, police discovered the couple had also been abusing their two other adopted children, a nine-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl, who were both discovered severely malnourished along with having their bedrooms locked from the outside.
The children said they would often be denied food, and when they were allowed to eat the couple would only feed them a mixture of cereal flakes, water and vegetable puree, the dailymail reported.

Cold water poured over them as they lay in bed as punishment
In other instances of abuse, the children were forced to write out derogatory phrases thousands of times.
In one example, investigators found over 1,100 written paragraphs stating: ‘My body stays flat on the bed at all times. I was never given permission to move or say anything else. Now I get to write about this along with everything else. I’m a fool.’
The 11-year-old girl and nine-year-old boy both told police that every night they would have cold water poured over them while they lay in bed as punishment.
According to the girl, she had not interacted with her siblings or any adults other than her parents in several years, and she ‘tried to keep track of the days and months by counting in her head,’ the report read.
She also claimed that she had not taken a bath in months, and that she would be denied bandages for her open wounds.
Jennifer, the children’s adopted mother published her first children’s book, ‘A Real Friend’ just months before her arrest.
According to her biography posted on Amazon.com, Jennifer has a degree in elementary education from University of Central Florida and spent eight years teaching fourth grade in public school.
‘She continued her teaching journey through homeschooling her own children,’ according to the post.
Following her 2021 arrest, Jennifer’s publisher, Clavis Publishing released a statement saying it will cease further commercialization of her book.
Following their plea agreement this week, prosecutors said in a statement that the children are now living with another family, and the Wolfthal couple ‘will spend significant time in prison while it protects the already-traumatized victims from the stress of having to testify.’