The disturbing case involving Ohio mother Elizabeth Siders has taken another unsettling turn as new details emerge, including that she married the father of her 16 kids when she was just a child.
As investigators continue piecing together the family’s history, the new information has added another layer to a case that has already shocked communities across Ohio.
On June 30, police found 16 children, ranging in age from 18 months to 18 years, inside a rural Vinton County, Ohio, home. Investigators allege more than half of the children had spent the previous four years confined to a single 12-foot-by-12-foot room, in a house covered in dirt and feces, according to People.
Describing the conditions as “deplorable,” Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson said the kids’ lives were in “danger at the time” they were discovered.
“They looked like almost feral animals. It was terrible,” the attorney general said, per CBS News. “This really looked third world.”
Vinton County Sheriff Ryan Cain offered a similarly grim assessment.
“Most of their livestock was kept in better condition than their children,” Cain shared.
‘Serious physical harm’
Several of the children required immediate medical treatment after they were removed from the home. Two were airlifted to specialized trauma centers after suffering what Wilson described as “serious physical harm,” while another seven were transported to hospitals in Columbus, including one child who was admitted to the intensive care unit and intubated.
Investigators also said several of the children struggled to communicate, while the oldest, an 18-year-old woman, is developmentally disabled and unable to write her own name.
The parents, Elizabeth Siders, 33, and Gary Siders Jr., 36, along with grandparents Gary Siders Sr., 73, and Christina Siders, 67, have each been charged with 16 counts of second-degree felony child endangerment. All four have pleaded not guilty and remain jailed on $300,000 bond.
“The conditions these children lived in were horrific, and we are sickened by it. Fortunately, this tragic chapter has closed, but their recovery will take time,” Cain said in a statement shared on Facebook.
“This is pure evil,” Wilson told the media, adding that the home was “one of the worst environments” he has seen in his career.
‘Isolation’ not ‘evil’
But Thomas Stolly – the attorney for the children’s mother – told the Associated Press (AP) that “evil requires malice,” and that he did “not see any malice in Elizabeth.”
“I think that this is more so a case of isolation than a case of evil, and I think that there’s an important distinction there,” Stolly told the outlet. “Because if that’s all you know – and you have to think someone at 15 years old doesn’t know a whole lot about being an adult, about being a mother, about being a wife – and that’s been your worldview for the past 17 or 18 years, you get shaped by that.”
Married at 15
The timeline of Elizabeth’s own life helps explain the point Stolly was making.
According to Mason County public records, on March 31, 2008, the mother – then Elizabeth Russell – married the kid’s father, Gary Siders Jr., in 2008, when she was just 15 years old.
Gary was 19 at the time and since his bride was underage at the time, both sets of parents were required to sign the marriage certificate.
Their oldest daughter was born only two months later.
“I think it may be too early to actually determine what was going on there.” Stolly told AP.
“While the headlines may be sensational, there’s a real human component to this and so I would ask people to give this process time to play out.”
Family ‘horrified’
Meanwhile, the arrests have also shaken members of the extended Siders family, many of whom say they had no idea how the children were allegedly living.
Ronnie Fletcher, the Sider’s son-in-law, told WOWK-TV the family was “horrified” when they learned what had happened.
“Horrified. Worried about the kids,” he told the outlet. “It’s hard to explain the action when you’re distant family. What can I do to help?” he said, explaining that his wife, and her sisters, are “quite a bit older” than Gary Jr.
“If we would have knowed that it was like that in that home, we would have done something about it, even if it was just to go there and take the kids ourselves or give them money,” Fletcher said. “Them girls would have went there and cleaned the house themselves if they’d knowed it was like that.”
He also said the wider family has received threats since the arrests became public.
“It’s been awful for the people that had no idea that was going on in the house that are related to this family,” Fletcher said, adding it’s been difficult since they were “stapled pure evil” by the attorney general. “We’ve had death threats.”
“So now they’ve got our kids trapped inside because we fear for our kids to let them outside because of these people that are acting crazy,” he added.
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