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CHARLOTTE — A judge has granted a motion by federal prosecutors to dismiss charges against a woman accused of keeping three children as her domestic slaves in Monroe.

Mercedes Farquharson was first indicted in the case in 2006. But in court papers filed earlier this month, prosecutors said they were seeking the dismissal because Farquharson had been "declared incurably incompetent to stand trial."

Still, the motion from federal prosecutors said the government "reserves its right to seek reinstatement of the Bill of Indictment if the defendant's competency is restored."

According to the original indictment, the children were 11, 7 and 2 years old when they started living with Farquharson.

Farquharson persuaded the mother of two of the children to let them live with her by claiming to be a god. She legally adopted the third child. All three of the children are British nationals.

Farquharson and the children lived in Spain until 2001, when she moved them to a house on Hampton Downs Road in Monroe, the indictment said. They lived there until 2005.

The indictment claims that she forced them to work from before dawn until after midnight cooking, cleaning, weeding gardens and tending to a flock of about 100 chickens.

She's also accused of beating the children, preventing them from going to school or leaving the house and feeding them caffeine so they could work longer. News researcher Marion Paynter and Observer archives contributed.