Jennifer and Joseph Wolfthal pleaded guilty to abusing their adopted children in Florida
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A Florida children's author – known for penning stories about friendship – was charged alongside her husband for abusing and neglecting their adopted children, authorities said.
Jennifer Wolfthal, the author of "A Real Friend," and her husband, Joseph Wolfthal, an engineer for Lockheed Martin, pleaded guilty on Jan. 13 to aggravated child abuse and neglect of a child with great bodily harm, according to plea agreements obtained by Fox News Digital.
Jennifer Wolfthal will be sentenced to 12 years in prison, while her husband will be sentenced to 10 years behind bars, according to the plea agreement.
"This plea and sentencing agreement ensures that the Wolfthals will spend significant time in prison while it protects the already-traumatized victims from the stress of having to testify," a spokesperson for the State Attorney’s Office in Florida’s 18th judicial circuit said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "The State Attorney’s office made sure law enforcement and the children’s new guardian supported this sentence before it agreed to it."
The investigation into the couple was launched in 2021 after their then 8-year-old adopted daughter was brought to the hospital with organ failure, unconscious and covered in injuries. The couple also had two other adopted children – a 9-year-old and 11-year-old.
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"Due to the height and weight of [the girl], it is not likely the swollen bruise on the back of her head and the laceration on her lip and broken tooth were caused by off balance falls," the police report reads.
READ JENNIFER WOLFTHAL'S PLEA AGREEMENT: APP USERS
READ JOSEPH WOLFTHAL'S PLEA AGREEMENT: APP USERS
While the girl was in the hospital, investigators visited the family home and said they found two other children with "symptoms of malnourishment, bruises and lack of care."
Police said the children's bedrooms had their doorknobs installed backwards, with the locks on the outside.
During additional searches of the home, authorities found more than 1,100 written paragraphs reading: "My body stays flat on the bed at all times. I was never given permission to move or say anything. Now I get to write about this along with everything else. I am a fool."
The book is still for sale on Amazon, but reviewers have been filling the comments with links to news articles about the allegations against the author.
Authorities also shared that all three of the Wolfthals' adopted children were subject to other horrifying tales of abuse. Following the investigation, the children were moved to live with another family.
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Fox News Digital's Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
Sarah Rumpf-Whitten is a U.S. Writer at Fox News Digital.
Since joining in 2021, she’s covered high-stakes criminal justice—from the Menendez brothers’ resentencing, where Judge Jesic slashed their life-without-parole terms to 50-years-to-life (making them parole-eligible), to the assassination attempts on President Donald Trump's life and shifting immigration enforcement, including her reporting on South Florida’s illegal-immigration crisis, covering unprecedented migrant crossings from the Bahamas and ensuing enforcement operations.
Beyond those beats, she reports on crime, politics, business, lifestyle, world news, and more—delivering both breaking updates and in-depth analysis across Fox News Digital. You can follow her on Twitter and LinkedIn.
