A welfare check led Michigan deputies to a filthy home where three children had been living for several years without outside contact, education or basic hygiene, authorities said.

"Obviously, the trauma here is significant," Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said in announcing the charges Wednesday.

A Michigan woman has been charged with child abuse, five days after police found her three children living alone for years in a house teeming with trash and feces

The Pontiac, Michigan, mother who is accused of abandoning her three children to live in squalor for years was charged Wednesday with felony child abuse.

Children, ages 15, 13 and 12, were found inside a Pontiac, MI home full of feces and trash. According to the sheriff's office, their mother had left them alone in the home around four years ago, and would return to drop food off to them.

Police discovered a boy and two girls abandoned by their mother and living in squalor for at least five years in southeastern Michigan while conducting a welfare check during the past weekend.