Sixteen children from a single family have been rescued from a home in rural Ohio where authorities say they had been living in deeply squalid conditions, and four members of the family now face a string of felony charges. The case has stunned the small community where the children were found.
The discovery was made in Hamden, a village in Vinton County in southern Ohio. Investigators said they came upon the children while carrying out a search warrant as part of a separate, unrelated investigation, and were confronted with conditions inside the home that they described as wretched.
Officials said the children had endured those conditions for a long time. According to authorities, the children had been living amid filth and were largely confined to a single room over much of the past four years, and a number of them had to be taken to hospital and treated after being found in poor condition.
The charges fell on the adults closest to them. The children's parents and two grandparents, identified as Gary Siders Jr., Gary Siders Sr., Elizabeth Siders and Christina Siders, were each charged with 16 counts of child endangerment, all of them second-degree felonies.
The four have since been before a judge. At their court appearance, the judge entered not guilty pleas on their behalf, and bond was set at 300,000 dollars for each of them as the case moves forward.
Authorities painted a troubling picture of how isolated the children had been. Officials said some of the children were unable to speak, and that one of them, an 18-year-old who is developmentally disabled, could not write her name. The children had not been enrolled in school.
It appeared that the family had managed to keep the children almost entirely hidden. Investigators said it seemed no one outside the household knew about them, and that the family had moved around southern Ohio over the past two decades in a way that appeared to avoid setting up medical and government records.
The children have now been taken out of the home and into care, and the accused are presumed innocent unless and until the case is proven. As the investigation continues, officials signaled that they were still working to understand the full scope of what the children had endured.