{"id":31907,"date":"2025-11-12T10:51:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T10:51:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/31907\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T10:51:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T10:51:12","slug":"da-seeks-to-get-abuse-victims-statements-allowed-at-trial-western-lehigh-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/31907\/","title":{"rendered":"DA seeks to get abuse victims&#8217; statements allowed at trial | Western Lehigh County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>L. MACUNGIE TWP., Pa. &#8212; Two teenage boys who were allegedly starved and abused by their parents in Lehigh County might not have to testify against them.<\/p>\n<p>A status hearing was held Monday for Tracy and Joshua Dechant.<\/p>\n<p>The couple faces a dozen charges. They&#8217;re accused of starving their twin 15-year-old sons and forcing them to stand naked in the freezing cold outside their Lower Macungie Township home.<\/p>\n<p>The DA&#8217;s office says it wants to have statements the boys made to police, neighbors and medical professionals be allowed at trial. This would keep them from having to testify in court.<\/p>\n<p>The judge hasn&#8217;t issued a ruling on it yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"L. MACUNGIE TWP., Pa. &#8212; Two teenage boys who were allegedly starved and abused by their parents in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,433],"class_list":{"0":"post-31907","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-allentown","8":"tag-allentown","9":"tag-allentown-headlines","10":"tag-allentown-news","11":"tag-lehigh-county"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31907","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=31907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}