The trial of a Longview couple accused of mistreating five adopted children began with a 14-year-old boy testifying that the pair hardly fed him so he resorted to eating dog food.

The boy weighed only 50 pounds - half the normal weight for his age - when he and four adopted sisters were placed in protective custody in March of last year, The Daily News reported ( http://is.gd/F46085).

Jeffrey and Rebecca Trebilcock rigged a motion-sensing alarm to keep their adopted children from taking food, some of which was kept locked up, Deputy Prosecutor James Smith said Monday in Cowlitz County Superior Court.

The Trebilcocks, both 45, have denied the abuse and suggested other health problems caused the children to be underweight. Each is charged with one count of first-degree criminal mistreatment and four counts of second-degree criminal mistreatment in the bench trial before Judge Michael Evans.

The boy was severely malnourished and near death when he was rushed to a Portland hospital last year, his heart beating so slowly one doctor was surprised he was conscious, Smith said. The boy and his four adopted sisters, ages 8 and 13, all rapidly gained weight and improved in health once they were away from the Trebilcocks.

The couple's four biological children, most of them in their late teens, were well-fed, authorities said.

Defense lawyers Kevin Blondin and Ted Debray said the Trebilcocks are good parents who clothed their children and gave them all the food they wanted. The kids were underweight because they'd recently suffered a bout of the flu, the attorneys told the judge.

The lawyers suggested other medical problems, such as fetal alcohol syndrome, also could explain the boy's condition.

The boy who testified Monday said he wasn't allowed to use the bathroom at night so he urinated in a cup. He said that if his parents found the cup, they made him drink it.

The boy said his parents taped his mouth shut as a punishment. He testified that he was often cold and damp. When he wet himself or the bed, the Trebilcocks made him wash his own sheets and clothes in a bucket in the yard, regardless of how cold or wet the weather. He then hung the clothes and sheets outside.

He wasn't allowed to wear shoes often on the Trebilcocks' roughly 30 acres in west Longview and did chores - feeding and watering goats and other animals - in his bare feet, he said. And his parents insisted that his bare feet be inspected before he came inside to ensure that he didn't track dirt into the house. But no one would bother, he said, so he spent hours huddled on the porch. If he cried about it, he said, his mother or another family member popped out the door and doused him with cold water from a glass.

The boy said his parents sometimes fed him on the porch. They put food in a plastic potato salad container, which they called his trough, then passed it out the door to him. Breakfasts often amounted to dry oatmeal, he said. And on at least one occasion the Trebilcocks gave him moldy bread because they didn't want it to go to waste.

"They gave it to me in the back in my trough," he said.

The boy's biological sister and another sister who was born in Haiti testified Tuesday. One of the girls, a 12-year-old, said she wouldn't get to eat if she didn't finish her chores, KATU reported ( http://is.gd/SOt8c9). She said she was also made to stand outside in the cold with no jacket or shoes.

The girl testified she stole bread and took toothpaste from the bathroom to eat.

The prosecutor showed a picture of a locked cabinet in the Trebilcocks' master bedroom. It was stocked with food, including candy bars, and soap.

The trial is expected to last two weeks.

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Information from: The Daily News, http://www.tdn.com