Milwaukee, Wis. ? An Oshkosh, Wis., woman accused of locking her 13-year-old stepdaughter in an attic bedroom for almost two years was able to manipulate schools, the girl’s friends and even police officers who were called to her home before Christmas, an Oshkosh police spokesman said.

Sgt. Steven Sagmeister said he didn’t know that officers from his department had been sent to the house last month until he read about it in Friday’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“It was kind of like getting hit with a brick,” he said. “(You wonder) ‘Could you have been in there that much sooner?’ It’s a possibility, but … you’re trying to deal with the facts presented to you at the time. There (are) judgment calls that you have to make. … Even though people a lot of times think we’re clairvoyant, we’re not.”

According to a police report obtained by the Journal Sentinel this week, Lynn Engstrom called 911 on Dec. 20 when Beth Redmann, the girl’s paternal grandmother, tried to visit the girl and deliver presents. Redmann, who left before police arrived, later was ticketed for disorderly conduct after Engstrom claimed Redmann forced her way into the family’s home. When Redmann talked to one of the police officers, Joseph Nichols, about making a child abuse report, he told her he had seen all four children – the stepdaughter and Engstrom’s three children from a previous marriage – in the home and they were fine.

This week, about a month after the 911 call, Lynn Engstrom and her husband, Clint Engstrom, were arrested and charged with causing mental harm to a child. A criminal complaint says they kept the 13-year-old “grounded” in an almost empty bedroom behind a locked door, monitoring her every move with a video camera. She was confined about 22 hours a day with no heat, a urine-soaked mattress and no toys or books. She was allowed to leave the room only for one-minute bathroom breaks, meager meals and chores, the complaint says.

The situation was discovered Jan. 12 after the couple took the girl to a hospital, saying she was hearing voices, tearing out clumps of her hair and picking at her skin.

Lynn Engstrom’s manipulation of the police department was just one of many examples of her deception, Sagmeister said. The girl had been transferred from Smith Elementary School to Grace Lutheran School in Oshkosh and back. It is unclear how often she attended classes. When school officials asked where to send her academic records, Lynn Engstrom once told them to send the files directly to her, Sagmeister said. Another time, she said she was sending the girl to a boot camp in Utah.

When the girl’s friends came over to play, Engstrom told them, “She doesn’t want to play with you anymore,” Sagmeister said.

Even the girl didn’t realize how much she had been victimized, Sagmeister said. After police interviewed her at the hospital, “she looked up at the officer from her hospital bed and said, ‘You mean it’s really not my fault?'”

Lynn Engstrom, 35, and Clint Engstrom, 32, will be in court Thursday for a preliminary hearing on criminal charges.