In first court appearance, new details revealed about the Gloucester Township couple accused of ‘barbaric’ abuse and confinement of their teenage daughter

The Gloucester Township couple charged with confining and abusing the woman’s teenage daughter inside their home for years appeared in court for the first time Thursday, as prosecutors made new accusations of mistreatment.

Brenda Spencer, 38, and Branndon Mosley, 41, were ordered to be detained until trial by Judge Gwendolyn Blue, who said that if the allegations brought by the prosecution were true, they indicated a pattern of “barbaric ... acts of torture.”

“I find that conduct to be inhumane,” she said.

Spencer and Mosley have been charged with kidnapping, abuse, neglect, and assault, and Mosley also has been charged with sexual assault. Both defendants face the possibility of life in prison if convicted. Neither spoke in court Thursday.

At the detention hearing, prosecutors alleged that Spencer and Mosley made the victim an outcast of their family, subjecting her to wide-ranging physical and verbal abuse, while referring to her privately as an inhuman “it.”

When the victim finally escaped from the home on May 8 and went to a neighbor for help, Spencer allegedly saw her leaving through the front door and said, “Bye, bitch.”

Spencer removed the victim, who is now 18, from public school after she finished sixth grade in 2019, a year later than prosecutors previously reported. The victim told prosecutors that Spencer attempted to homeschool her for about a week, and that she had not received any education since. Spencer removed the victim’s younger sister, who is now 13, from school in 2020 after she finished second grade, prosecutors said.

The sister told prosecutors that she has continued homeschooling on a computer, but could not describe much of what she had been learning. She was not confined in the same manner as her sister but told prosecutors it had been a long time since the two girls had been let outside to play.

For several years after being pulled from school, the older sister said, she had been confined inside the family’s home. She spent about a year being locked inside a dog crate with handcuffs behind her back, another period of time inside a locked bathroom chained to the toilet by her ankles, and since September inside a room that was not locked but was surveilled by Spencer and Mosley with a baby monitor, prosecutors said.

The room was bare except for some of the home’s many animals and a bucket for the victim to use as a toilet, which she would have to clean out herself, prosecutors said. The younger sister had her own room where the victim was allowed to sleep for awhile, but that was no longer the case by the time the victim escaped, prosecutors said.

She was let out of these spaces sometimes to sleep, to greet visiting family members, to occasionally shower, or to do chores around the house and in the yard, usually cleaning and taking care of the family’s animals, prosecutors said. They said the family had five Great Danes, multiple huskies, 26 chinchillas, birds, a snake, and a bearded dragon.

Prosecutors said that the victim reported being physically beaten by both Spencer and Mosley. The couple sometimes withheld food as punishment for not doing her chores or talking back, and fed her meals from a popcorn bucket instead of a plate or bowl, prosecutors said.

A neighbor who said she knew the family for a decade told prosecutors she saw the younger sister with black eyes on multiple occasions. When she asked Spencer about them, she said, Spencer told her that they were caused by a door. Another neighbor who knew the family reported not having seen the children since 2022, according to prosecutors.

According to the older daughter‘s statements to prosecutors, Mosley sexually assaulted her several times, beginning when she was 10.

Once, Mosley gave her food in exchange for allowing him to perform oral sex on her, prosecutors said. The victim told her mother about these sexual assaults, but she did nothing about it, prosecutors said.

After Mosley was arrested May 10, he told police that it was possible that he had committed the sexual assaults, but that he could not recall, in part because he used to drink frequently, prosecutors said.

Mosley also allegedly cut the victim’s hair on multiple occasions without her permission, once so short that the family began referring to her as “Buzz.”

Prosecutors also said police found a note in the home in which the victim said to her mother: “I’m sorry when you said ‘kill yourself,’ and I said, ‘I will.’”

According to her attorney, Terrell Ratliff, Spencer, who also was arrested May 10, denied that she or Mosley confined her daughter in the home or withheld food. She also denied that her daughter told her about being sexually assaulted by Mosley.

Spencer and Mosley have been together since 2014, but are not legally married. They have lived in the Gloucester Township home since 2017. Neither has a criminal history.

Mosley had worked for SEPTA for over 15 years, most recently as a rail engineer. He received an award last month for his handling of a train mechanical fire.

Mosley’s attorney, Megan Helfrich, said that he gave his statements to police about 3 a.m., after having worked multiple overnight shifts in a row, and that his instinct was to take the blame for Spencer in his confession.

While Helfrich admitted this was not a home environment she would want her kids to live in, she disputed the level at which the daughters were actually kidnapped or confined, pointing to the fact that the older girl left through the front door with her mother watching. (Prosecutors said that the victim had tried to escape other times, and that she told police that Mosley once threatened to break her leg if she did.)

The next court date for Spencer and Mosley is scheduled for July.