Authorities found 16 children living in a squalid Hamden, Ohio home on Tuesday while they were there on an unrelated investigation, then removed the siblings from the house and put them in the hands of child welfare officials. The children ranged in age from 1 1/2 to 18, and seven were taken to hospitals after the discovery, including one who was in critical condition.
The case became public quickly because the home held far more than a troubled family scene. It held 16 siblings, some unable to speak, all of them not enrolled in school and mostly confined to a small room in the house. By Thursday, four adults had been arrested on child endangerment charges and each had pleaded not guilty, with bond set at $300,000 apiece.
Emily Collins, who decorated the sidewalk in front of her shop with bright flowers and stars for the Fourth of July, said the children were hiding in plain sight. “Right under our noses and nobody was able to help them sooner,” she said. She added that it was “really sad” that something like this had surfaced in a place she described as a small Hallmark town.
The facts now point to a long-running failure, not a one-day collapse. Neighbors said they had never spotted the children, and the family had moved around over the past two decades, making the home harder to read from the outside and the children harder to see from the street.
That distance also shows up in the way the adults are describing themselves. Thomas Stolly, the attorney for Elizabeth Siders, said she was “crying and exhausted” when he met with her on Thursday and that her first questions were about her children, not her release. He said she asked whether they were safe, where they were and when she would be able to see them again. Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson took the opposite view, calling the family “pure evil.”
The children are now under temporary custody, and the criminal case is only beginning to move through court. The unanswered question is not whether the home was filthy or the charges were serious; it is how 16 children could remain hidden long enough for the outside world to miss them until an unrelated investigation brought authorities to the door.
