OWYHEE COUNTY, Idaho — An Owyhee County couple is facing child abuse charges after investigators say they locked their children inside a camp trailer without electricity, or enough food or water.
Duncan and Melissa Transue, 33 and 38, were indicted Jan 7 on four counts each of felony injury to a child, in connection to their alleged treatment of the two boys, who were 10 and 12 at the time.
According to court documents, it was Melissa Transue who investigators believe carried out most of the abuse, while her husband is charged with failing to stop her.
According to the indictment, Melissa Transue "locked and/or chained" both boys in the trailer, leaving them inside without sufficient food or water. The documents do not specify how long the children were left in the trailer.
Melissa Transue also hit the older boy in the face hard enough to cause his mouth or nose to bleed, according to prosecutors. Another time, the indictment alleges, she choked the 12-year-old until he passed out, causing him to collapse and hit his head.
Duncan Transue is accused of locking or chaining the 12-year-old in the trailer once himself, but the other charges stem from a failure to intervene when his wife abused the boys, according to the indictment.
The arrests come as the latest twist in a long saga that began after a December 2018 kidnapping case in which Melissa Transue was the victim.
Melissa Transue said she was herself chained up in an Owyhee County barn and held captive by 36-year-old convicted sex offender Chancey Lee Baker - who, like the Transue family, lived in a series of connected camp trailers off Looten Lane in Owyhee County. She said that after she told Baker that she no longer wanted him around her children, he shocked her with a Taser and taped her hands and feet together, and chained her to the wall of an outbuilding on the property.
Melissa Transue told KTVB that she was held captive in the barn for eight days, during which time Baker told her he was going to kill her and forced her to call her family on the phone and say that she had left them. She ultimately escaped by using a drillbit to pry open the lock on the chains, then ran to a neighbor's house for help.
Baker, was arrested for kidnapping, then later charged with 21 separate counts of sexually abusing a child. He killed himself in prison in September before either case could go to trial.
The Transues' children were removed from their care by Child Protective Services in December 2018, after the investigation into the kidnapping started. Melissa Transue told KTVB in a March 2019 interview then that she and her husband were being accused of mistreating their children, an accusation she denied.
Both Duncan and Melissa Transue remain held in the Owyhee County Jail, and are set to enter a plea Friday. Felony injury to a child is punishable by up to a decade in prison.