MADISON (WSAU)  A Madison couple is due back in court this afternoon, on charges that they starved the man’s 15-year-old daughter and cooped her up in a basement for years. A preliminary hearing will take place in Dane County Circuit Court, where a judge will decide if the 40-year-old man and his 42-year-old wife should go on trial for a pair of felony counts. The hearing was supposed to be held on Tuesday, but the state’s chief witness had to stay home with a sick child.

Doctor Barbara Knox will testify today. She examined the girl after she ran out of her house in pajamas in mid-February, and was found by a man who called 9-1-1. The girl weighed only 70 pounds – a normal weight for a child half her age – and Knox described her as the victim of quote, “serial child torture with prolonged exposure to definite starvation.”

The father’s attorney has questioned the girl’s story.