Former surgeon, wife charged with abusing children

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PITTSBURGH -- A former Pittsburgh surgeon and his wife have been charged with confining their daughters to the garage of their new home in New Mexico for days and sending them to live alone in a run-down mobile home for two months.Dr. Kenneth M. Yaw, 54, an orthopedic surgeon, and Rita Starceski, 43, punished the teenage girls by leaving them in the garage with a sleeping bag, bread, peanut butter and a bottle of water, Las Cruces, N.M., police said.The couple also is accused of leaving three of the four daughters -- a 13-year-old and 15-year-old twins -- unsupervised in an unfurnished mobile home in a low-income section of Las Cruces, far from the confines of their $600,000 golf course home.Yaw, who left the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Mercy's staff last year, and Starceski, who is the girls' stepmother, were arrested Thursday and charged with seven counts of child abuse.They were released on $70,000 bonds and the children were placed in the custody of the Children, Youth and Families Department.According to police, Yaw woke the girls at 2 a.m. in early June, drove them to the trailer park and said, "Welcome to your new home."He left them there with some food and a few utensils, police said. A neighbor at the mobile home park who fed them told reporters that Yaw left them with a cell phone, but it was programmed to call only his or his wife's phones.Police said Yaw's 11-year-old daughter told them he had confined her to the garage for four days and three nights as punishment for not having the family dog on a leash and grabbing the dog by the collar.One of the 15-year-olds said she also was confined to the garage for a week as punishment for a remark she made to Starceski.The 13-year-old said she was confined to the garage for two to three weeks because she didn't do her homework.The girls said they were allowed to eat only bread and peanut butter while in the garage and could leave only three times a day to use the bathroom or wash.E-mail Torsten Ove at tove(at)post-gazette.com(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)