It's true that my husband and I can't "offer [our] child both a mother and a father." But we can offer him enough to eat and drink.

A Carnation girl who was so emaciated she wore a size 2 shoe and weighed 48 pounds at age 14 had begged a social worker to put her in foster care more than three years before her father and stepmother were arrested in 2008, according to a lawsuit filed against the state. The civil suit, filed in King County Superior Court last week, claims the girl's "nightmare of abuse and torture" extended to her younger brother, who was forced to participate in the abuse of his sister and was "essentially her jailer." Tesh said he is seeking $25 million for the girl and $15 million for her brother, who Tesh says was sometimes forced to guard the girl and alert his stepmother if she tried to sneak food or water.

According to police, the girl had been dehydrated for so long that she lost all of her teeth.

Mom and dad got just 3 ½ years in prison for torturing these two children.

According to the lawsuit, a CPS social worker visited the family home two weeks later where the girl "begged the CPS worker to get her out of there." According to the lawsuit, the social worker found that the complaint of neglect had merit but left after Long promised she would remove the lock and take the girl to a doctor and that they would both seek mental-health treatment. Long did not follow through and neither did CPS, the lawsuit claims.... Investigators with the sheriff's office said in court documents that Long routinely restricted the girl's water intake to several ounces a day, supervised her in the bathroom to prevent her from drinking extra water and duct-taped her hands and forced her head into the toilet.

She and her brother "were forced to sleep on the floor in the same room as their parents, and a heavy dresser was pushed in front of the door to keep her from sneaking out and getting water," police said.

But it could've been worse—they could've had gay parents.