A 12-year-old died malnourished and abused. Her family is demanding change, wondering how warning signs were ignored.

Twelve-year-old Malinda Hoagland lived the final months of her life in pain. She was forced to go hungry, confined to her bedroom, and shut away from the world.

Her father, Rendell Hoagland, and stepmother, Cindy Warren, chained her to a dresser and forced her to perform calisthenics in their West Caln Township home, according to investigators. They denied her food as she wasted away to 50 pounds, and withdrew her from middle school after staff there reported concerns about her truancy to state officials.

In May, after enduring what prosecutors later described as “evil and torment that no child should ever have to endure,” Malinda died. When medics took her to the hospital, she was “broken and barely alive,” with multiple bone fractures and severe damage to her liver, officials said.

Hoagland and Warren are both behind bars, charged with attempted murder and related crimes. More serious charges, including murder, may be filed as the investigation continues, authorities say.

Emily Lee vividly remembers the moment she learned of her sister’s death. The news of how Malinda died devastated her, she said, and she literally had to gasp for air.

“I know that sounds dramatic, but how does one react to being told that their father has just done all of those things to your baby sister?” Lee, 28, asked in an interview. “There’s no more reference to him as my father outside of this case. I think that’s the safest place to be for myself. I don’t know that man who is in jail.”

Hoagland’s attorney, Stuart Crichton, did not return a request for comment. It was unclear whether Warren had hired an attorney.

Lee said she had worried about Malinda’s safety ever since her father met Warren through a Facebook dating app in 2019. Warren, 45, had pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child in Monroe County a decade earlier after her ex-husband beat and neglected their son. That abuse, prosecutors said, mirrored what happened to Malinda.

Now, Lee and her sister Jamie Hoagland are demanding to know how a woman who acknowledged harming one child could go on to allegedly torture and starve another. They also want to know what led their father to inflict such pain on their sister. And they question how school staff and child-welfare officials missed warning signs that something was not right at home.

For their part, the sisters said, their father and Warren worked to keep them away from Malinda by moving hours away from the Poconos. The guilt of not being there to help their sister, they said, has propelled them to advocate for reform in the way authorities handle reports of child abuse and harmful conditions at home.

“Our goal is to make Malinda’s name bring about change,” said Jamie Hoagland, 23. “This little girl deserved so much out of life, and if we keep how we feel quiet, she won’t get what she deserved.”

For the first few years of Malinda’s life, she was a constant presence in her sisters’ lives. She was a bright, bubbly child who loved spring in the Poconos and especially delighted in butterflies and lightning bugs, they said. Though Malinda lived with their father, they saw her frequently, spending holidays and summers together.

But the siblings’ relationship changed when their father met Warren and began to keep his distance from his older daughters, who worried about his choice of a companion.

The sisters had read in the Pocono Record that Warren pleaded guilty in 2009 alongside her then-husband, McKinley, in the abuse of the couple’s then-3-year-old son, Isaiah.

In 2007, authorities say, the boy told detectives he had been locked inside his bedroom in the couple’s Stroudsburg home, beaten with a belt, and forced to walk up and down stairs with his hands over his head. Cindy Warren admitted to watching her husband beat the boy, and said she should have done something to stop him.

McKinley Warren was also charged with murder in the 2000 death of Jessica Bock, his 2-year-old daughter from a previous relationship. McKinley Warren, 58, later pleaded guilty to third-degree murder after admitting he beat the girl so severely that she had to be rushed to the hospital on the day of his wedding to Cindy Warren. He is currently serving a 25- to 50-year sentence in state prison.

The anonymous call that led investigators to discover McKinley Warren’s abuse of his 3-year-old son helped prosecutors in Monroe County, including First Assistant District Attorney Michael Rakaczewski, gather enough evidence to charge him in his daughter’s death.

Years later, when Rakaczewski learned from officials in Chester County that Cindy Warren had been charged in connection with Malinda’s death, he said he was stunned and saddened.

“These cases are jarringly similar,” he said. “It’s pretty horrific when you have a child that has to undergo this type of torture, and it’s especially horrific when you see a pattern of that abuse repeat itself.”

Years before Malinda died, Lee said, she told her father she was concerned about Warren’s past.

“I told him, ‘This woman shouldn’t be around Malinda. She’s bad news,’” she said.

Her father was upset, and he and Warren later made it clear that she was not welcomed in their home and not welcomed around Malinda.

“It was the end of our relationship,” Lee said.

About the same time, a Monroe County judge overseeing a custody dispute between Malinda’s mother and Hoagland, who had custody of the child, allowed the girl to live with him, but barred Warren from being near her.

Hoagland, though, ignored that order and moved with Malinda, Warren and one of Warren’s sons, first to Fort Washington and later to West Caln. As a result, Lee said, who lives in Bangor, Northampton County, she lost contact with them and never saw Malinda again.

Lee’s sister Jamie Hoagland, who also lives in Northampton County, said she had some limited contact with their father and Malinda. She saw Malinda at her father’s home in Chester County in December, shortly before Christmas. At the time, Malinda seemed fine, she said, but looking back, she wishes her sister would have confided in her or asked for help.

About the time of that visit with her sister, Malinda was struggling at North Brandywine Middle School. She had missed the entire month of December 2023, and teachers and school officials worried about the unexcused and unexplained absences, court records show.

School staffers were concerned enough to call ChildLine, the state hotline for reporting suspected child abuse. District officials acknowledged the report in a statement, but declined to comment further, citing the ongoing investigation into Malinda’s death. State health department officials also declined to comment.

Representatives from Chester County Department of Children, Youth and Families, responding to the ChildLine report, reached out to Malinda’s father, but only by phone, records show. Hoagland told investigators no one from the county agency visited his home, and county officials declined to comment on their contact with the family.

Hoagland withdrew his daughter from the school in January, not long after the ChildLine report, and enrolled her in Commonwealth Charter Academy, a cyber school, according to her sisters.

It was unclear whether state or Chester County officials, or staff at either school, knew that Malinda lived with Warren or knew of her conviction for endangering the welfare of a child.

Malinda’s siblings, meanwhile, say the system designed to protect children like her failed and are considering filing a lawsuit. Their attorneys, Thomas Bosworth and Alexandria Crouthamel, said state and county officials should be held accountable for the warning signs they missed.

“There are a lot of moments here where a lot of people failed Malinda,” Bosworth said, citing the county agency’s alleged decision to settle for a call to the Hoagland home rather than pay a visit.

“You have all these stars aligning. You have a child who’s getting yanked out of public school unexpectedly at the same time of this Children and Youth contact, and then she’s put in a cyber-only school,” Bosworth said. “Who was looking at this situation holistically from a bird’s-eye view?”

Malinda’s sisters said they’ve found a renewed purpose, in their sister’s memory, in spreading awareness of the warning signs of child abuse.

“I want people to know that there is help and this doesn’t have to happen to another boy or girl,” Lee said. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

Staff writer Maddie Hanna contributed to this article.