Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson has described a detail about the 16 children rescued from a rural home in Hamden, Ohio on June 30 that is difficult to shake. He said the children, aged 20 months to 18 years, had a "distant look in their eyes" when officers arrived. Combined with everything else found in that house, it paints one of the most disturbing pictures of child neglect in recent American history.
The children were discovered entirely by accident. Police were executing a search warrant related to separate charges against Gary Siders II, 36, who is accused of exposing himself to members of the public on four occasions in May. Nobody was expecting to find 16 children packed into a single 12-by-12-foot room covered in bugs and human waste, with a floor so rotted that officers almost fell through it.
Wilson said the children "looked like almost feral animals," and the county sheriff agreed, saying most livestock is kept in better conditions. The oldest child, 18 years old, could not read or spell her own name. Elizabeth Siders, the mother, had been giving birth almost every year since she was 15, when she married an 18-year-old in West Virginia.
All four adults, including Gary Siders Sr. and Christina Siders, have pleaded not guilty to 16 counts of child neglect. Gag orders have been placed on several defendants. A pretrial conference originally scheduled for July 23 has been pushed back to August 13.
