'Right under our noses and nobody was able to help them.' 16 kids found in squalor shocks Ohio town

Parents and grandparents arrested after 16 children – ages 18 months to 18 years - were rescued from a home in Ohio.

HAMDEN, Ohio — Just days after authorities removed 16 siblings from a squalid home and arrested their parents and grandparents, the question looms over their southern Ohio village: How could this have happened, for years, unnoticed, right here?

Neighbours of the family in tiny Hamden, employees at local stores where they shopped and even the investigators who responded to the scene have been left to wonder that aloud and to themselves, and the limited information shared by investigators doesn’t offer a full answer.

The children weren’t enrolled in school, the family moved around over the past two decades, and neighbours said they’d never spotted the kids. The children remained mostly confined to a small room in the house, investigators said, under deplorable conditions.

“Right under our noses and nobody was able to help them sooner,” said Emily Collins, 27, owner of VC Farm & Floral in nearby McArthur, as she lamented how the case goes against the grain of the tight-knit community.

“It’s just crazy with all the wonderful things going on in our little Hallmark town and this is what puts us on the radar. It’s really sad,” said the mother of three, who pulled out her chalk and decorated the sidewalk in front of her shop with bright flowers and stars drawn for the Fourth of July to cheer herself up.

Authorities said they had gone to the home Tuesday on an unrelated investigation and discovered the children — ages 1 1/2 to 18 years old — some of whom were unable to speak.

Seven were taken to hospitals, including one who was in critical condition, investigators said. Their current conditions weren’t immediately known Thursday. Child welfare officials have temporary custody of the children.

Lawyers: Let the case ‘play out’

Four people who are the children’s parents and grandparents were arrested on child endangerment charges. Gary Siders Jr., 36, Gary Siders, 73, Elizabeth Siders, 33, and Christina Siders, 67, pleaded not guilty to child endangerment. Bond was set at US$300,000 each.

The children’s mother, Elizabeth Siders, married their father Gary Siders Jr. when she was 15, and all of the children are theirs, her attorney, Thomas Stolly, told The Associated Press. She was “crying and exhausted” when he met with her on Thursday, Stolly said.

“In fact, my client’s first question to me when I walked into the jail and introduced myself was about her kids. She asked if her children were OK, she asked if I knew where they were, and she asked when she’d be able to see them again,” Stolly said.

He wasn’t able to answer those questions, “but I thought it was telling that her first concern was not, ‘When can I get out of jail,’ but was ‘Are my children OK.’”

Stolly said his client told him that all of the children were born in area hospitals and she considers herself a full-time mom. She left high school after the 11th grade, he said, and Gary Siders Jr. was driving for Door Dash and looking for another job, he said.

Stolly said the prosecutor’s office has not yet shared their evidence with him, but so far he hasn’t seen anything that supports Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson’s description of the family as “pure evil.”

“Evil requires malice, and I did not see any malice in Elizabeth,” Stolly said.

He added: “I think that this is more so a case of isolation than a case of evil, and I think that there’s an important distinction there. Because if that’s all you know -- and you have to think someone at 15 years old doesn’t know a whole lot about being an adult, about being a mother, about being a wife — and that’s been your worldview for the past 17 or 18 years, you get shaped by that.”

Stolly said Elizabeth didn’t characterize herself as a victim, but “I think it may be too early to actually determine what was going on there.”

“While the headlines may be sensational, there’s a real human component to this and so I would ask people to give this process time to play out,” Stolly said.

An attorney for the elder Siders also urged the public to wait before passing judgment.

“We ask that the community at large, as well as anyone who might have an interest in this case, to take a deep breath, step back, and let the case play out and the facts play out,” Dorian Baum told The Associated Press.

Attorneys for Siders Jr. and Christina Siders declined to comment.

Little traffic on home’s rural road

A man who lives three houses down from the Siders family said he had seen “no kids at all” there.

“It’s a sad situation,” said Joseph Stewart, 60, who has lived in the “quiet neighbourhood” for six years.

Authorities wouldn’t publicly share the nature of the other investigation that led them to the house Tuesday. However, court records show a warrant was issued for Siders Jr. that day on misdemeanor indecent exposure charges related to alleged incidents on four days in May. He has pleaded not guilty.

On Thursday, windows and doors at the formerly wide-open home, about 60 miles (97 kilometres) southeast of Columbus, had been boarded up. Police tape and piles of refuse remained.

The previous day, a door was ajar and heaps of trash and children’s toys were visible inside. A wood deck and the backyard were filled with discarded tires, a high chair and other debris.

The house sits on a road tucked alongside a steep railroad embankment, where tracks carry rumbling trains to a rail yard in the village of fewer than 1,000 residents. The closest neighbours are separated by trees and thick brush, but the house is easily visible from the road.

Kids not seen in schools

Investigators said members of the family had moved around southern Ohio over the past two decades and that it looks like they avoided creating a medical or governmental paper trail. The Vinton County Local School District, the only district in the area, said it has no records indicating that any of the children were ever enrolled.

“These folks were pretty good at hiding these kids,” Wilson, the state attorney general, said Wednesday.

The children’s absence from school, and the apparent lack of regular visits with medical professionals, likely contributed to keeping the dire situation unknown, said Jacqueline Yahn, an associate professor at Ohio University.

“When kids are isolated or not participating, you don’t have someone who’s trained to know the clues,” said Yahn, who specializes in rural education and poverty. “A well-check is called that for a reason: They’re checking for well-being and development.”

Investigators were reviewing whether the family was reported to any children’s services agencies in the past.

The children spent most of their time in a room that was roughly 12 feet by 12 feet (3.5 metres by 3.5 metres), according to investigators, who noted that human waste was all around.

“They looked like almost feral animals. It was terrible,” Wilson said.

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Julie Carr Smyth and Rebecca Boone, The Associated Press

Boone reported from Boise, Idaho. Associated Press reporter Ed White in Detroit contributed.