A New Mexico mother was arraigned this week on 18 charges related to the abuse of a child, including one count of criminal sexual penetration.
Valerie Cordell, 41, entered a plea of not guilty on the charges. Her husband, 50-year-old Melvin Cordell, faces 24 charges, including child sex charges, and will be arraigned next week.
The Cordells were arrested in February after New Mexico State Police received a report from Roswell Police after the couple’s 16-year-old daughter reported the abuse while at the state National Guard Challenge Academy in Octobre 2024, KQRE reported.
The girl told investigators that she had been pregnant twice after having “unwanted sex” with her father and two other adult relatives, court documents say. Melvin Cordell is accused of performing “non-consensual” abortions on the girl and “destroying, changing, or hiding” the fetuses.
The teen said that her parents forced her and her siblings to have sex with each in front of adults.
She also said she and her siblings were often starved as punishment and said that there were times when they were denied food after they called 911 and child services came to the 35-acre rural property where the family lived in “underground caves” made of mud.
Court documents describe the property as looking like a “city trash landfill” with buckets of feces, piles and piles of trash, rotting food, animal skeletons, broken appliances, broken campers, other vehicles, and clothing scattered everywhere.
According to the district attorney’s office, seven children lived on the property, ranging in age from 6 months to 16 years. They have all been placed in state protective custody.
The Cordells are both being held without bond.
