A couple has been arrested after allegedly locking three of their adopted children in a bedroom and starving them - before enjoying a Thanksgiving feast downstairs with their biological son.

 The alleged treatment at the hands of Larry and Nikki Russell was uncovered when their eldest adopted son escaped at their Terre Haute, Indiana home on Friday after breaking a window.

Wandering barefoot and weighing just 93 pounds, the 17-year-old boy was picked up by a motorist and taken to Union Hospital, where staff called police and the Department of Child Services.

He told officials the couple doused him and his adopted brothers in urine, bound them to their bed posts, locked them in pitch-black rooms and regularly left them without food and water.

But he said the treatment was not an isolated incident; he claimed he and the other children were often doused with urine and left without food or water.

He said the couple tied him and two of the other adopted boys to their beds with duct tape and rope, and locked them inside the room, which had boarded-up windows and no light.

One boy told police about a horrific incident where Larry Russell allegedly forced another boy to apply IcyHot - a pain relieving heat rub cream - to his genitals and rectum.