News & Views

If you've ever watched Hoarders and wondered "how could someone subject another human being to living in such filth," I'm here to tell you it could be worse. MUCH worse. A couple of Miami parents (a word I'll be using very loosely in this here piece) were arrested this week for not only allegedly forcing their four kids to live in a complete pigsty, but also allegedly prostituting out their young daughters.

Gabriel de Jesus Orellana and Renee Marie Garcia have four kids between the ages of 7 and 13 -- two boys and two girls. And cops say both girls have been offered up to men in the past.

In fact, when the couple were arrested, it's because an undercover officer responded to a tip that Orellana was trying to pimp out his little girl. Instead the police say he gave the officer Garcia's number (thank heavens for small mercies), and the grown woman agreed to have sex for money ... if the would-be john would take her to buy drugs.

Still thinking it can't get much worse than subjecting your kids to a house of horrors?

I hate to say it, but after years of working the crime beat for a small town newspaper, when it comes to child abuse cases, I'm always waiting for the other shoe to drop. There's never a "good" child abuse case, mind you ... but at least 90 percent of the time, it seems like you hear parents have done something awful, only to have the cops come back at you with a one-two punch that tops it entirely.

I would be calling these "parents" every name in the book simply based on the deplorable conditions cops described in their home -- I'm talking garbage all over the floor, drug paraphernalia evident all over the house (with a 7-year-old!?), no food to speak of. You just don't do that to human beings. But then the cops added the alleged prostitution, and as far as I'm concerned, it's case closed, throw the book at 'em.

What do you think should happen to this couple if they're convicted?

Image via Miami Police