Dad who starved, beat his 6 adopted kids bloody and had dogs bite them, gets no mercy from Pa. court

By Matt Miller | mmiller@pennlive.com

A Pennsylvania man who spent seven years beating, starving and torturing his six adopted children wasn’t punished too harshly when a judge slapped him with a 7- to 40-year prison term, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.

Timothy Dean Krause, whose 52-year-old wife Barbara Jean is serving an identical jail term, beat the children so viciously with paddles that their buttocks bled through their underwear, investigators said.

They said the Clearfield County couple also starved the children, made them undergo excruciating punishments, didn’t send them to school and even had the family dogs bite them while they were being abused. The Krauses referred to the children by racial slurs.

The children, ages 16 to 12, endured the abuse from 2011 to 2018.

Timothy Krause, 53, received his prison sentence after pleading guilty to 22 criminal charges, including child endangerment and assault. He had no sentencing deal.

In denying Timothy Krause’s appeal, Superior Court President Judge Emeritus John Bender relied heavily on the findings of county Judge Paul E. Cherry, who hit Krause with that penalty. Cherry called the abuse the children suffered “pervasive and severe.”

That abuse also included threatening the children with axes and guns, Cherry noted. All of the kids were made to sleep in one room on one thin mattress that was so small two had to sleep on the floor. Cherry wrote that some of the children were fed only eggs and water as punishment for weeks at a time. Every one of them was malnourished.

So, Cherry found, Timothy Krause’s acts amounted to “violation of the parent/child trust.”

Bender agreed.

Cherry “determined that a lengthy term of incarceration was warranted due to the gravity of (Krause’s) crimes, the need to protect the public from his violent criminal propensities, and to best serve Krause’s rehabilitative needs,” Bender wrote. “We do not agree with (Krause) that his sentence of 7 to 40 years’ incarceration for his 7 years of violent abuse towards his six adopted children is excessive.”