The parents and grandparents of 16 children found living in a dilapidated house in southern Ohio were arraigned Wednesday on more than a dozen felony child endangerment charges, officials said. <\/p>\n
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Vinton County Sheriff Ryan Cain called the home \u201cdisgusting,\u201d saying it was littered with human feces. He believes the children were being kept in a 12-by-12 foot room for nearly four years.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of our livestock was kept in better conditions than the children,\u201d Cain said at a Wednesday news conference. <\/p>\n
Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson said he could not get the smell of the home \u201caway from me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The suspects were identified as Gary Siders Jr., Gary Siders Sr., Christina Siders and Elizabeth Siders. It\u2019s unclear if they have obtained attorneys.<\/p>\n
At their arraignment, each was ordered held on $300,000 cash bond and barred from contacting one another or the children. <\/p>\n
The attorney general said investigators were pursuing a separate case when the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the local sheriff\u2019s office discovered the children in the Hamden home. They ranged in age from 18 months to 18 years and included both boys and girls. <\/p>\n
Hamden, a village of fewer than 1,000 people, sits about 60 miles southeast of Columbus.<\/p>\n
The children were taken to the hospital; some have since been examined and released. One was placed in intensive care at one point, Wilson said, and two were flown to Level One trauma centers because of their injuries.<\/p>\n
Some of the children can\u2019t communicate at all, and others have \u201climited\u201d speech, officials said. None were enrolled in school and the eldest \u2014 18 and described as developmentally disabled \u2014 could not spell her own name.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of these children couldn\u2019t even speak,\u201d Wilson told reporters. \u201cIt was terrible. They looked like almost feral animals. It was terrible.\u201d <\/p>\n
Tessi Siders, a relative of the family, said she had not seen them in at least eight years. <\/p>\n
\u201cI knew little Gary had kids, yeah. I don\u2019t remember meeting any of the kids, though,\u201d she said in a phone interview Wednesday. \u201cI knew they had a lot of kids through family talking years ago, but there\u2019s no way I thought they had that many kids.\u201d <\/p>\n
She said she\u2019s only met the children\u2019s mother once. <\/p>\n
The attorney general said the family was \u201cpretty good at hiding these kids\u201d and appeared to have bounced around in Ohio before settling in Vinton County about four years ago. The home was owned by a trust. <\/p>\n
Wilson called the scene the worst he had ever encountered in his career, describing what he found as \u201cpure evil.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cJustice will be served for these children,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
If you are a child being abused, or know a child who may be facing abuse, call the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at (800) 422-4453, or go to childhelphotline.org. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The parents and grandparents of 16 children found living in a dilapidated house in southern Ohio were arraigned…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-737496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}