LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- Flies crisscross the air in the dilapidated trailer home as the refrigerator is opened, revealing a loaf of bread, some bottled water, a piece of flatbread on a napkin and a pot containing leftover beans.

It is the remains of the diet former UPMC surgeon Kenneth Yaw mandated for his three teenage daughters after he moved them into the trailer as punishment, according to police.

"It's sparse," landlord Mike Barrett said of the accommodations. "This is bargain basement stuff, but that's what goes in this neighborhood. ... To me, this is squalor."

Across town sits the family's $600,000 adobe-style home along a golf course, where Dr. Yaw and his second wife, Rita Starceski, were arrested and charged with child abuse 10 days ago.

According to the criminal complaint, Dr. Yaw forced the three teens -- 15-year-old twins and a 13-year-old -- to live in the Rancho Cielo Grande mobile home park because they had stolen money from their stepmother.

On earlier occasions, according to police, Dr. Yaw had confined his daughters, including an 11-year-old, in the garage for days or weeks at a time for offenses such as neglecting to do schoolwork or handling the family dog improperly.

The girls told police that while they were in the garage they were given only water, bread, peanut butter and sleeping bags. They were allowed inside to use the bathroom two or three times a day.

Though Dr. Yaw initiated the punishments, police determined Ms. Starceski knew about them and didn't intervene and was therefore responsible.

Dr. Yaw, 54, and Ms. Starceski, 43, are free on $70,000 bond, but the three teens and the three other children who lived with them were removed by the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department. The four girls they allegedly abused are now staying with other family members.

Reached at his home, Dr. Yaw expressed frustration at the charges and media coverage but politely declined comment on the advice of counsel.

The couple's lawyer, Michael L. Stout, said he is confident both Dr. Yaw and Ms. Starceski will be exonerated at trial. A hearing date has not been set.

"All is not as it seems," Mr. Stout said.

To Las Cruces neighbors, they were mostly strangers, despite having lived in the house since last fall. Many were surprised to hear media reports that there were teenagers living in the house, as they only had seen the two youngest children -- ages 4 and 9 -- operating a sidewalk lemonade stand.

Home-schooled by Ms. Starceski, the children were largely isolated. The 11-year-old told police she had no friends outside the family, a far cry from their days in Fox Chapel, when the large Yaw brood was a community fixture, according to friends.

An Air Force veteran who served in active duty during Operation Desert Storm, Dr. Yaw arrived in Pittsburgh from San Antonio in 1990.

The family settled in Fox Chapel as Dr. Yaw worked at UPMC. Among other positions, he served as chief of orthopedic surgery at the VA Hospital for four years.

Maureen Yaw, an Ohio native and former nurse, was in charge of the burgeoning household, which grew to 10 children. All were active in sports, scouts and St. Joseph Parish in O'Hara, and they were known for being polite and well-behaved.

Dr. Yaw even was attentive to those beyond his own large family, always checking on sick neighbors. In those days, friends said, the alleged abuses in Las Cruces would have been unfathomable.

"He was always a pretty strict guy," said Mary Grenen, whose kids were friends with several of the Yaw children and now has set up a fund for donations to assist them. "[But] when we knew Dr. Yaw in the element that we knew him in -- when the kids were little -- he was really one of the kindest, nicest people you'd ever want to meet."

Friends said that all began to change when Maureen Yaw died in September 2001, after a three-year battle with breast cancer.

Dr. Yaw married Ms. Starceski, then a software engineer at Murrysville-based Respironics, in 2003 after the couple met online.

The Yaw children were pulled out of public schools as the family hopped around the Pittsburgh area, frequently changing residences and Catholic schools.

One family friend, who asked not to be identified, said Dr. Yaw would distance the family from anyone who wanted to help or befriend the children.

"As soon as people started getting involved, Ken pulled back again," the friend said. "Once Rita came into the picture, you couldn't even get to the kids."

The children were removed from former friends and didn't participate in activities where they once were mainstays, friends said, and eventually all connections to Maureen Yaw were discarded.

Dr. Yaw frequently butted heads with his children -- often with Ms. Starceski as the source of friction. The family splintered, with some of the children striking out on their own even before turning 18.

At one point the family maintained two residences. Dr. Yaw split time between a house in Washington's Landing with his new wife and her son, and a Crawford Village residence where his other children stayed with a nanny.

Disagreements with his superiors, a former colleague said, caused Dr. Yaw to leave UPMC for Mercy Hospital in 2004. UPMC later acquired Mercy and Dr. Yaw decided to decamp for New Mexico.

Amid strip malls and scrub grass, the tony development of Sonoma Ranch borders a golf course of the same name. Last fall the family settled there, in a three-bedroom bungalow on Golf Club Road, joining Dr. Yaw who already had begun work in Las Cruces, a rapidly growing city of nearly 90,000 about an hour from the Mexican border.

The five oldest children, by then on their own, did not join them. Ms. Starceski had a son from a previous relationship and gave birth to a son by Dr. Yaw in 2004. In all, seven children made the trip to New Mexico.

After the family arrived in Las Cruces, a 17-year-old daughter left to attend college early, with the family's blessing, but Dr. Yaw eventually cut off financial support and asked her to return home. She declined and has not decided whether to rejoin the family now.

In May the 15-year-old twins and the 13-year-old took money from their stepmother's purse, according to police, intending to buy clothes like those of other children in the hopes of enrolling in public school.

The next month, Dr. Yaw found the money stashed by the water tank, and reported them to juvenile authorities to charge them with larceny.

Around the same time, he traveled across town to the trailer park, which is in the midst of a run-down neighborhood that, according to Mr. Barrett, the landlord, is plagued by gangs and drugs. Dr. Yaw put down a deposit for the $350-per-month trailer and told Mr. Barrett his daughters would be coming around.

The girls told police Dr. Yaw awakened them one night at 2 a.m. and told them to pack their things. He dropped them off at the trailer with bread, peanut butter, flour, pinto beans, a pot, some disposable utensils and a cell phone that could dial only his and Ms. Starceski's numbers.

"Welcome to your new home," he said.

Occasionally Dr. Yaw would drop by and take the girls grocery shopping, replenishing their staples and picking up fruits and vegetables.

Mr. Barrett didn't think much of it, figuring one of the girls was of legal age. They kept the place fairly clean, and they seemed to be having fun. The girls would play pickup soccer games with local kids, he said, and go to the park down the street or to the corner market.

When Mr. Barrett asked if the air conditioning or anything else needed fixing, the girls would always say everything was fine. Dr. Yaw came by several times a week to check on them and paid the rent on time each month, in cash.

"I'm not seeing the abuse that man is accused of," Mr. Barrett said.

"His view of consequences is different from others, but at no point did he put his daughters in harm's way. ... That would be every teenager's dream, to be out from under the thumb of their parents for a summer."

One of the twins, after two weeks, wrote an apologetic letter and was brought home, but the other two remained in the trailer. When the Aranda family moved to a nearby unit, one of the daughters befriended the Yaw girls, who eventually confided their Spartan living arrangements to their new friend's mother.

Cindy Aranda offered to call the police, but the girls pleaded with her not to. They wanted to stay, Mrs. Aranda said, because it was better than being at home.

By late July, the remaining two girls were regulars in the Aranda trailer. In addition to her husband and five children, Cindy Aranda often fed the Yaw girls the Mexican food their father forbade because it was too fattening.

Dr. Yaw, the girls told the Arandas, would stop by every once in a while with a scale to weigh them. If they were gaining weight, it was a sign they were eating something other than what he gave them, which would make him angry.

The girls -- having only sleeping bags and no mattresses -- would sleep on the Arandas' couches, sneaking back in the morning just in case their father made an early visit. The family also bought them clothes, which the girls stashed in the Arandas' shed so their father wouldn't find them.

In the end, Dr. Yaw brought the glare of law enforcement upon himself.

On Aug. 5 he came for the girls. The 13-year-old was going to be sent to military school, while the 15-year-old would be starting up home school.

The 15-year-old didn't want to leave, and a shouting match ensued. A concerned Cindy Aranda came outside to confront Dr. Yaw, threatening to call the police. The argument heated up, and eventually Dr. Yaw called the authorities to report the disturbance.

Realizing this was more than a neighborly dispute, Las Cruces detectives interviewed two of the Yaw girls and Ms. Starceski, then executed a search warrant on the trailer Aug. 7. The couple was arrested that morning.

Dr. Yaw requested an indefinite leave of absence from Mountain View Medical Center, where he works, and Ms. Starceski has told a neighbor she is now afraid to leave the house because she thinks the news media is watching her front door.

Though few knew the family at all, the news shook Sonoma Ranch. The neighbor said she was struck by the family's "strong values," because the children were unfailingly polite and read books instead of playing video games all day.

"I wish they felt like we could have helped them with whatever problems they had," the neighbor said. "I think they're very frightened, as they should be."

Meanwhile, relatives traveled to Las Cruces to retrieve the children. Among them was Kathleen Farrell, the late Maureen Yaw's sister-in-law.

"The kids are with family and they're safe and they're happy and they're healthy," Ms. Farrell said, declining to confirm where they are staying. "They're doing well, and they're recovering from this."

The white and green trailer, bearing a fresh For Rent sign, had been cleaned last week, and Mr. Barrett replaced a broken window and cut the grass.

He took a weedwhacker to a makeshift garden where the girls had planted watermelon, mimicking the ones growing in front of the Yaw home on the other side of town.