West Caln couple accused of abusing, starving a 12-year-old to death will face a Chester County judge

Rendell Hoagland’s daughters saw him Thursday for the first time since his arrest, clad in a red prison jumpsuit and led into a West Chester courtroom. But he wouldn’t meet their gaze.

Emily Lee, Hoagland’s oldest daughter, said she was determined to be there for that moment: It was important to her to see her father in shackles, like the ones he used to chain her 12-year-old sister to furniture as he and his girlfriend tortured and starved the girl to death.

“It’s almost satisfying,” Lee said afterward. “I think as his daughter, maybe I shouldn’t feel that way, maybe I should feel sympathy. But I just feel justice for my sister.”

Hoagland, 53, and his longtime girlfriend, Cindy Warren, 46, faced a judge Thursday for what prosecutors have described as the horrific abuse of his daughter, Malinda. The girl died in their care, broken mentally and physically, as she wasted away to 50 pounds before her death in her West Caln home.

The couple waived their preliminary hearings, and a judge sent their case on first-degree murder and related crimes to trial in Chester County Court. First Assistant District Attorney Erin O’Brien said her office would seek the death penalty against the couple if they were convicted.

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

Hoagland and Warren systematically tortured Malinda over the course of several months before she died, prosecutors said. They denied her food by locking their refrigerator, beat her repeatedly with their hands and a belt, and forced her to perform calisthenics for hours while chained to furniture.

Attorneys for the couple declined to comment Thursday.

In 2009, Warren pleaded guilty to endangering the welfare of a child for abusing her son from a previous relationship. The facts of that case, prosecutors said Thursday, were nearly identical to the abuse that led to Malinda’s death.

Videos retrieved by investigators from surveillance cameras installed in the couple’s home on Reid Road captured some of the abuse, including instances in which Warren berated Malinda. Other clips showed Malinda begging to be unshackled, apologizing for upsetting Warren.

The couple, through text messages recovered by prosecutors, discussed their abuse of the child, sometimes planning how to hide her bruises when sending her to school, according to the affidavit of probable cause for their arrests. Malinda missed several weeks of school late last year, a time that coincided with the worst of these assaults, prosecutors said.

Warren and Hoagland pulled Malinda out of North Brandywine Middle School when staff there alerted the state Department of Health’s ChildLine service over concerns they had about her treatment at home. Caseworkers from the Chester County Department of Children, Youth and Families called the couple, but did not make a visit to their home, a decision that outraged Malinda’s sisters.

The three sisters have filed a wrongful death lawsuit in federal court, saying Chester County officials and staff at Malinda’s school failed her and violated their duties to protect children by not fully investigating the abuse she was facing at home.

On May 4, Malinda did not wake up, prosecutors said. Warren and Hoagland conspired to create a cover story that she had injured her head at a campground pool, and again when she fell off her bike, according to the affidavit. They also discussed whether to take her to the hospital or to try to rouse her with smelling salts, fearing that child-service workers would be suspicious of her injuries.

Eventually, when medics arrived, they were appalled at Malinda’s condition, authorities said, and she was pronounced dead a short time later at Paoli Hospital. Doctors there told investigators that she had multiple bone fractures and her organs had begun to atrophy from starvation.