{"id":186598,"date":"2026-05-07T22:14:10","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/186598\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T22:14:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T22:14:10","slug":"pre-trial-hearing-held-for-lehigh-county-couple-accused-of-starving-abusing-teen-sons-western-lehigh-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/186598\/","title":{"rendered":"Pre\u2011trial hearing held for Lehigh County couple accused of starving, abusing teen sons | Western Lehigh County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>L. MACUNGIE TWP., Pa. &#8211; A Lehigh County couple charged with abusing their teenage sons were back in front of a judge on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>A pre-trial hearing was held for Joshua and Tracy Dechant.<\/p>\n<p>The two are accused of starving their teen sons and forcing them to stand naked in the freezing cold outside their Lower Macungie Township home last January, when the boys were 15 years old.<\/p>\n<p>The couple are charged with conspiracy to commit third-degree murder, false imprisonment, and related crimes.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re due back in court July 21st.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"L. MACUNGIE TWP., Pa. &#8211; A Lehigh County couple charged with abusing their teenage sons were back in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":186599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,2675,83217,41306,83216,83214,433,2754,83218,83215],"class_list":["post-186598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-child-abuse","tag-conspiracy-to-commit-murder","tag-court-hearing","tag-false-imprisonment","tag-joshua-dechant","tag-lehigh-county","tag-lower-macungie-township","tag-teenage-victims","tag-tracy-dechant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}