{"id":56491,"date":"2025-12-09T20:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-09T20:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/56491\/"},"modified":"2025-12-09T20:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-09T20:11:08","slug":"lehigh-county-parents-accused-of-starving-abusing-2-teens-appear-in-court-do-not-yet-have-legal-representation-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/56491\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh County parents accused of starving, abusing 2 teens appear in court, do not yet have legal representation | State"},"content":{"rendered":"

L. MACUNGIE TWP., Pa. – Two Lehigh County parents accused of starving and abusing two of their 15-year-old sons appeared in court Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Pamela Lehman, a public relations officer with the\u00a0County District Attorney’s Office,\u00a0said\u00a0Tracy and Joshua Dechant currently still do not have attorneys to represent them.<\/p>\n

Their next court appearance is February 19, 2026, Lehman said.<\/p>\n

<\/a> <\/p>\n

DA seeks to get abuse victims’ statements allowed at trial<\/a><\/p>\n

The two, who posted bail, have said in court they cannot afford private representation.<\/p>\n

At a previous court session, the judge suggested a Philadelphia-based firm that could handle the case. The judge also recommended a firm from Kutztown, in Berks County the Dechants could reach out to.<\/p>\n

They are facing 12 charges, including eight felonies, including the most serious charge of conspiracy to commit third-degree murder.<\/p>\n

They’re accused of nearly starving their two twin 15-year-old sons to death and made them live in torturous conditions.<\/p>\n

The Dechants live on Divot Drive in Lower Macungie. A neighbor called the police and said that one of the Dechant’s teenage sons was running outside, practically naked in single-digit temperatures.<\/p>\n

Investigators say the boys were starved to the point where one was 54 pounds, and the other was 53 pounds. Both boys should have been around 140 pounds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"L. MACUNGIE TWP., Pa. – Two Lehigh County parents accused of starving and abusing two of their 15-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":56492,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,2891,31,710,2892,2894,10044,740,742,1856,2893,433,2897,28,2890,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-56491","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-common-law","12":"tag-crime","13":"tag-crimes","14":"tag-criminal-justice","15":"tag-criminal-law","16":"tag-deviance-sociology","17":"tag-justice","18":"tag-law","19":"tag-law-enforcement","20":"tag-law-related-events","21":"tag-lehigh-county","22":"tag-misconduct","23":"tag-pennsylvania","24":"tag-public-law","25":"tag-violence"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56491","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=56491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}