Gateley was 14 when she went to live with Tom and Debra Schmitz in Tennessee. Her biological parents abandoned her at birth in China, and she spent her first 12 years racked with polio in an orphanage.
She thought she was the “luckiest girl in the world” when an American couple took her home with them to the Florida Keys.
Life in the United State was at first “awesome, living a dream,” but darkened rapidly, Gateley said.
The Florida parents soon grew tired of their new daughter and accused her of hitting one of their other children.
They decided to unload the teen on the Schmitz family…
She was one of at least nine adopted and rehomed kids when she arrived at the Schmitzes’ isolated farmhouse in Trenton, Tenn. The couple would eventually collect a total of 17 of the children.
Debra Schmitz kept control through a sadistic system of physical punishment and mental torture, according to Gateley.
“I knew she’d lost her mind by day 2,” Gateley said.
She said Debra Schmitz would take away the brace she needed to walk on her polio-ravaged leg. And there were the “graves.”
Sometimes, Gateley was forced into the role of tiny prison guard, supervising younger kids as they dug. At least once, she spent three hours digging her own body-size hole, NBC reported.
“She said, ‘Get out and go dig your own grave,’” Gateley said. “‘Nobody will find you.’”
She and the other children were rescued by a visiting nurse, who gave her a tape recorder to document the abuse.
Debra Schmitz was sentenced in 2006 to six months in jail and put on probation after pleading guilty to 14 counts of child abuse and one count of trafficking.
Her then-husband’s record was expunged.
Girl, given up by adoptive parents, made to dig own grave in abusive new home - NY Daily News: