Florida Couple Once Praised for Parenting Now Accused of Torture

BEVERLY HILLS, Fla. (AP) - When John and Linda Dollar were seeking to adopt more children a decade ago, social workers regarded them as model parents - well-to-do, well-meaning folks who raised their five children with love.

"The Dollars love and want to help children. They feel the more children they have, the merrier they are," dazzled caseworkers wrote.

Now the couple stand accused of monstrous acts against five of their eight children, who told investigators they were starved, shocked with a cattle prod, beaten with a hammer and had toenails yanked out with pliers. Their emaciated bodies were compared by police to victims of Nazi concentration camps. snip

Well-educated and religious, the Dollars seemed to have the best of intentions in a 1995 state application to add to their brood of five adopted children by taking in three more.

"Adoption provided my wife and I the opportunity to extend our love to children we were not fortunate enough to have on our own," John Dollar said in the application. "We both found God sending us children who needed us and we needed them."

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