Posted on 09/13/2005 3:09:22 PM PDT by stainlessbanner
WAKEMAN, Ohio (AP) - The 11 special needs children removed from a house where authorities say some of them slept in homemade cages are polite, well-behaved, well-dressed and appear to have been fed well, neighbors and authorities said Tuesday.
Their adoptive parents, Michael Gravelle, 56, and Sharen Gravelle, 57, denied in a custody hearing Monday that they abused or neglected the children, who are ages 1-14 and have conditions that included autism and fetal alcohol syndrome. No charges had been filed as of Tuesday afternoon, and messages left with their lawyer, David Sherman of Westlake, were not immediately returned.
Neighbors say they often saw or heard the children playing, and the family yard was littered with dozens of toys - plastic cars, tricycles, slides and an overturned skateboard near a wooden ramp. Seven bicycles were piled on top of each other in a storage shed.
``Those kids were dressed better than some of the kids who live in Cleveland. They behaved like any other kids when they were outside playing,'' said Jim Power, who lived across the street.
At night, authorities say, eight of the children were confined in 3-foot tall wooden cages stacked in bedrooms on the second floor. The cages were painted in bright, primary colors, with some rigged with alarms that would send a signal to the downstairs when a cage door was opened. One cage had a dresser in front of it, Huron County sheriff's Lt. Randy Sommers said Tuesday.
``The sheriff and I stood there for a few minutes and just kind of stared at what we were seeing. We were speechless,'' Sommers said.
No one answered the Gravelles' door Tuesday, and the gray, four-bedroom house was dark. A black potbellied pig, roosters and several other animals shared the yard outside Wakeman, a city of roughly 1,000 people 50 miles west of Cleveland.
The children were placed with four foster families and were doing well, said Erich Dumbeck, director of the Huron County Department of Job and Family Services. He said they appeared relieved.
``We're still trying to figure out what happened in that home. We don't have any indication at this point that there was any abuse,'' Dumbeck said.
Sommers said he saw no signs the children had been malnourished or beaten, but they were sent to a hospital for examination.
The Gravelles said a psychiatrist recommended they make the children sleep in the cages, county Prosecutor Russell Leffler told the Norwalk Reflector. The parents told authorities that the children, including some who had mental disorders, needed to be protected from each other, according to a search warrant on file at Norwalk Municipal Court.
Leffler refused to speak with an Associated Press reporter Tuesday at his office.
Sommers said a social worker investigating a complaint contacted authorities. Dumbeck would not discuss the complaint.
According to the search warrant, the cages had mats and the house smelled of urine. One boy said he slept in a cage for three years, Sommers said. A baby slept in a small bed, and two girls used mattresses
Deputies were called to the home twice in the last five years: once to settle a neighbor dispute in 2000, and last year when a 12-year-old boy was upset and ran away for several hours. He was found down the road.
Although the family has lived in Huron County for 10 years, the children were adopted through other counties and states, Dumbeck said, declining to identify the locations. He said his agency was trying to determine how the adoptions originated.
``I don't believe there were any case workers checking in with this family,'' he said. Reviews are ordered only when there is a complaint.
A boy born with HIV was adopted as an infant in 2001 through the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services, the agency's director Jim McCafferty said. The Gravelles receive a subsidy of at least $500 a month.
The private agencies who reviewed the couple's home life before the adoption gave them ``glowing reports,'' McCafferty said.
Payments are meant to encourage adoption by ensuring families can maintain their standard of living, said Rhonda Abban, chief of adoption services for the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.
``There's no followup because you're giving that family the money so they can incorporate that child into their life,'' she said.
Leah Hunter, who lives two houses away, said she often saw the children walking down the road.
``They looked OK. They hardly ever wore shoes but I'm a country girl and for me that's normal. You can drive by and see them playing in the yard, or from my house you could hear them playing,'' Hunter said.
Sommers said one of the smaller buildings on the property was used as a schoolhouse.
Hunter's father-in-law, Holey Hunter, who also lives down the street, said two of the teenage children helped him bale hay this summer. ``They weren't bad kids. I was tickled to give them some spending money,'' he said.
If some of the citizens of New Orleans had grown up in cages there might have been a lot less problems.
8^)
It sounds awful though it appears to be less gruesome than first reported. OTOH how could social services expect one couple to care for 11 special needs children?
"``There's no followup because you're giving that family the money so they can incorporate that child into their life,'' she said."
Ok, we've got a candidate for dumbest statement by a government employee.
Sounds more like they were being kept safe in bed at night rather than risk them slipping outside or turning on the stove while the parents slept.
What's the problem? They should move on to the "Bunghole Theory of Raising Children."
There are other ways to do that - one would be to not adopt 11 kids so that you feel you have to stack them in cages.
It's no wonder relations are strained at street level.
Obviously we don't know the entire story, but I do have experience with adopting a child who has behavioral problems. He put our family through absolute hell for about two years. We were at our wits' end. At night, he would sneak out of his room, go downstair and hide money, hoard food in his room, all kinds of crazy things (he was only 3!). Once, he caught a doll on fire on our back porch.
We didn't know what to do. He was getting counseling, but in the meantime, what? Wait till he burned the house down and killed us all? Wait until he took a knife to his room and hurt himself (We DID find kitchen knives in his room occasionally)? We made the agonizing decision to lock him in his room at night. Believe me, it wasn't something we did joyfully. We knew we were taking a big risk, and we prayed every night for his safety.
Happy ending, though. We only had to do that for a short time. The counseling and endless hours of me working with him paid off. He still has a little bit of emotional baggage, but most of the things he does now are just bone-headed 11-year-old stuff.
I'm not siding with these parents, but I'm not wholesale condemning them either until I know the entire story.
"WAKEMAN, Ohio (AP) - The 11 special needs children removed from a house where authorities say some of them slept in homemade cages are polite, well-behaved, well-dressed and appear to have been fed well, neighbors and authorities said Tuesday."
Damn, need to try it if I ever have kids.
"Oh, yeah. I bet the Guardian ate this up with a spoon. I've always suspected British newspapers all have a guy whose full-time job is to look for whacked out stories from the States. Even the good papers, like the Telegraph, give you a Bizarro World idea of America, if that's your only source."
Wasn't it a Telegraph poll where they voted Homer Simpson as the greatest American in history?
Just astonishing. When you have four bedrooms, where do you put all those kids? Well, I guess we know the answer.
I'm not siding with these parents, but I'm not wholesale condemning them either until I know the entire story - thank you and God bless you. So often we read these original stories and are horrified; it is nice to have a perspective of someone dealing with the same issues (although it sounds as if you handled it a bit better) - but 11 kids? wow
My son was 9 months old when he first climbed out of his baby bed. I made an appointment with the pediatrician for that day, and we talked about my options: Hub and I could sleep in shifts, or we could put a lid on the crib. I was a first-time mom, and the idea of a lid horrified me until I thought--what happens when we fail to keep a close watch and he gets out of bed?
At 9 months, he was still an infant--very bright, bright enough to get into serious trouble...
We painted some beautiful pictures on the lid of the crib, and each night, tied it shut out of his reach. We did this for about a year. Everyone survived, and he has no phobias--full grown self-supporting married father of two, today...
But the things you go through...
I don't think they are "cages" per se.
From reading the descriptions, it sounds more like homemade cribs, and a jury-rigged set up to alert the parents if the kids go wandering at night (as children, especially autistic children, are want to do).
I couldn't IMAGINE trying to take care of 11 special-needs kids. With our one little guy, it came so close to tearing our family apart (we already had two birth children), we almost didn't go through with the adoption. We're glad we did, but it was real iffy there for a few months.
Neighbor had (has) triplets and was overhwhelmed.
(Mama hightailed it on him; long story.)
My wife introduced him to the concept of the "crib tent."
Wonderful invention.
"I don't think they are "cages" per se.
From reading the descriptions, it sounds more like homemade cribs, and a jury-rigged set up to alert the parents if the kids go wandering at night (as children, especially autistic children, are want to do)."
Admittedly I don't have children, but I dont think of cribs as having lids or being stackable.
The news program I'm watching in Atlanta just said the couple said a psychologis(or psychiatrist) told them to do it.
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