Anderson Cooper talks with Kristen and Will Stillman about abuse they suffered in Denver

Anderson Cooper.

Last week, Anderson Cooper interviewed Willow the Cat. On Monday, he featured two more Coloradans on his new show, Anderson -- but the story of Kristen and Will Stillman, which first appeared on the cover of Westword a year ago, isn't nearly as warm and fuzzy.

When the twins were eight years old, their mother, Karen, dropped them off at a house in northwest Denver, where the head of the household, Eric Torrez, held them hostage for a dozen years, subjecting them to incredible psychological and physical tortures. By the time she was twenty, Kristen had given birth to four children -- all the result of rapes by Torrez.

Will, too, suffered unimaginable horrors -- horrors he spoke about on yesterday's show, in hopes that the next adult who hears a child's plea for help will do something.

Oh, and there was one mention of cats yesterday: When Karen -- who appeared from prison -- was sent to jail for sixteen years, she was more worried about what would happen to her kitty than what she'd done to her children, the children she'd given to a monster when they were just eight. That cat, she was, was "defenseless."

Here's more from yesterday's Anderson show.

Patricia Calhoun's original piece on Kristen Stillman just won the best non-daily feature story award from the national Society of Professional Journalists. Read "Spreading Her Wings" here.