Authorities in rural Ohio rescued 16 children from a dilapidated home in Hamden on Wednesday after finding them confined to one room for much of the past four years. Four adults, including Elizabeth Siders, were later charged in a case officials described as a brutal family situation rather than human trafficking.
The children ranged from 1 and a half to 18 and included boys and girls, all from the same family. Officials said seven were taken to hospitals in Columbus, two were flown by helicopter to level one trauma centers and one child was in critical condition on Tuesday and had to be intubated.
The rescue came during a search warrant tied to an unrelated investigation. Vinton county sheriff Ryan Cain said the room they were kept in was about 12ft x 12ft and that the home was covered in human waste, with bacteria and faeces present throughout. He said authorities did not find cages in the house, but the conditions were severe enough that, in his words, most livestock would have been kept better.
William Archer said the children’s parents and two grandparents each faced 16 counts of second-degree felony child endangerment involving serious physical harm. A judge entered not guilty pleas for Gary Siders Jr, Gary Siders Sr, Christina Siders and Elizabeth Siders on Wednesday and set bond at $300,000 each.
That ruling leaves the central question unanswered: how the children were kept inside the home for so long. Investigators said the family had moved around southern Ohio over the past two decades and appeared to avoid medical, government and school records, which helped keep them out of view. Andy Wilson said it seemed as though no one outside the family knew about the children, even in a village of fewer than 1,000 people where Joseph Stewart said he had seen “no kids at all” since the family moved in.
The case now moves into court with the family’s story still only partly known. Officials have said it was not a trafficking case, but the scale of the confinement, the condition of the children and the fact that the home stayed hidden until an unrelated search warrant brought authorities to the door make it one of the most disturbing child-endangerment cases in recent memory.
