Sixteen neglected children rescued from Ohio house

Police rescued sixteen children aged between 1.5 and 18 from a dilapidated house in southern Ohio where the family had lived in isolation for four years.

Sixteen neglected children rescued from Ohio house

Authorities freed sixteen minors from a dilapidated house in southern Ohio where the family had lived in isolation for four years. The children ranged in age from one and a half to eighteen, and several suffered such severe developmental delays that they could not even speak.

Officers were conducting a search at the home in Hamden, a village of barely one thousand residents in one of Ohio's poorest regions, in connection with another case when they discovered the children. The house was in a state of disrepair, and the children spent most of their time confined to a room of roughly twelve square metres. The eldest, an eighteen-year-old girl with a developmental disorder, could not even write her own name.

Over the past two decades the family had moved frequently around the southern part of the state and appears never to have been entered into medical or official records anywhere. The children did not attend school, and the social-services system most likely had no knowledge of their existence. None of the nearby neighbours had ever seen children around the house, although discarded toys, strollers and children's bicycles were found in rubbish piles nearby.

Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson said at a press conference on Wednesday that when the children were found they appeared almost feral. Seven were taken to hospital, two by air ambulance. One child remains in a critical condition, while the others are being kept under observation. The children have been placed in temporary care.

The parents and two grandparents were arrested at the scene. They have been charged with child endangerment and aggravated assault.

Source: Telex

Source: Telex