Police had visited Bucks home where abuse was suspected
Although it took until Wednesday for authorities to take action, police officers had previously visited the home of a man now charged in a bizarre scheme in which a family apparently "gifted" its daughters to him.
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Editor's Note: This story was corrected to reflect that only one girl was allegedly "gifted" to Lee Kaplan by Daniel and Savilla Stoltzfus.
The man, Lee Kaplan, 51, of Feasterville, is accused of statutory rape and fathering two children with the oldest daughter, now 18, who was 15 when the first child was born, officials said. The second child was born six months ago.
On Sunday, Kevin Rihl, a neighbor of Kaplan's, said he and another person went to Lower Southampton police about a year ago to report unsettling behavior by Kaplan, including his acknowledgment that he was taking care of several girls for their financially strapped parents at his three-bedroom white bungalow on Old Street Road in Feasterville.
While neighbors' concerns about the girls in Amish garb at Kaplan's home had prompted at least one police visit, said Robert Hoopes, Lower Southampton public safety director, officers did not have probable cause to get a warrant to enter the home.
"I'm saying if you go to the house - he wouldn't even let people go in - even if the police were coming, he would turn the lights out, stuff like that," Hoopes said Saturday.
In interviews Saturday, three of Kaplan's neighbors mentioned having called police or social services about the children. Rihl said he believed his meeting a year ago with two detectives and a former police chief should have sparked an investigation of Kaplan. Rihl never witnessed inappropriate contact between Kaplan and the girls, he said, but he found the situation strange enough that he forbid his own young children from playing in the section of their yard closest to Kaplan's house.
"When I started noticing [the girls] outside, and the awkwardness of their character, I thought something's not right here," he said. "I wouldn't even let my kids over that way."
Because he only saw girls in groups of three, Rihl said, he never imagined Kaplan was housing a dozen of them. He did, however, notice other unusual things on Kaplan's property: a bunch of chickens, boarded-up windows, an inflatable pool filled with murky green water, and burning trash.
A few weeks after Rihl's meeting with police, he said, an officer called him back. The officer - whose name Rihl said he did not know - told him they had resolved the yard nuisance issues and were "looking into" questions about the girls.
But Rihl was angry to learn that it was not until another neighbor reported Kaplan to a child-welfare hotline last week that officials took any action against him.
"How long does it take when the evidence is beating you in the face that something's wrong here?" said Rihl, 38.
A neighbor's complaint Wednesday to Bucks County Children and Youth Services finally prompted action, police said, because information about an underage girl's having been impregnated and given birth allowed them to get a warrant. In addition to the statutory rape charges against Kaplan, the parents of the girls, Daniel and Savilla Stoltzfus, are charged with child endangerment. The three are each held on $1 million bail.
Kaplan helped the Stoltzfus family escape a debt crisis, authorities said. In return, they said, Daniel Stoltzfus gave his then 14-year-old daughter to Kaplan. It is not year clear how and why the other girls ended up in his home. Investigators from the Lower Southampton Police Department, the Bucks County District Attorney's Office, and Pennsylvania State Police are still seeking answers.Messages to Lower Southampton police went unreturned Sunday, and Bucks County District Attorney David Heckler, reached by telephone, said simply: "We're investigating."
Heckler chaired a task force on child protection formed after child molestation charges were filed against former Pennsylvania State University assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky in 2011. Heckler said his office was not notified of irregularities at Kaplan's home until Wednesday.
Heckler said Friday that any potential probe of who knew what - and when - would follow the criminal investigation of Kaplan.
He said the girls appeared to be in good physical condition with no obvious signs of trauma. Authorities said the girls had been removed from the home and were in the care of Lancaster County child-welfare workers, familiar with Amish culture, who would interview them.
Rihl said one piece of the puzzle upset him most: Had an investigation commenced sooner, perhaps the teen girl could have avoided being impregnated a second time.
"All this stuff made me say I can't sit with a clean conscience and not say something," he said. "Why wasn't this done a year ago?"
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