After authorities removed 16 children from a squalid home and arrested four adult relatives, a tough question looms over their Ohio village: How could this have gone unnoticed for years?
Neighbors 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 don’t offer a full answer.
The children weren’t enrolled in school, the family moved around over the past two decades, and neighbors said they’d never spotted the kids. The children remained mostly confined to a small room in the house, investigators said, under deplorable conditions.
Authorities went to the home Tuesday for 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. The Ohio Department of Children and Youth has temporary custody of the children.
A neighbor, Josh Odell, has a view of the backyard but said he had never seen a child.
“I really hope they all get better. But, I mean, it obviously weighed on my conscience that I wished I could have done something,” Odell told WSYX-TV.
Another neighbor, Joseph Stewart, 60, said that he saw “no kids at all” since the family moved in three houses down and that he could clearly see the house and yard when passing by.
“It’s a sad situation,” he said. Stewart has lived on the street for six years and called it “a quiet neighborhood.”
Four people, 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 $300,000 each.
Authorities wouldn’t publicly share the nature of the other investigation that led them to the house Tuesday. But 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 kilometers) 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 neighbors are separated by trees and thick brush, but the house is easily visible from the road.
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,” Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson said Wednesday at a news conference.
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 meters by 3.5 meters), according to investigators, who noted that human waste was all around.
“They looked like almost feral animals. It was terrible,” Wilson said.
