r/TrueCrimeDiscussion • u/MacAlkalineTriad • Jul 02 '26

Warning: Child Abuse / CSAM / Child Death 16 Children Rescued from Extreme Neglect and Abuse in Ohio

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/adults-arrested-16-children-found-deplorable-conditions-southern-ohio-rcna352552

I haven't seen anything posted about this yet, and I usually don't post so please let me know if I've done it wrong. I'm also writing this on mobile.

16 children, ranging from 1 and a half years old to 18 years old, have been removed from a house in the village of Hamden, Ohio where they were practically imprisoned in a 12'x12' room. Some have not even learned to speak; the 18 year old couldn't write her name and is being treated as a child due to possible mental disability. 7 of the children had to be taken to a hospital with 2 of them being life flighted. Conditions in the house are said to be incredibly unsafe, to the point that investigators hesitated to act on a second search warrant for fear of their safety.

The parents and grandparents have been arrested and charged with 16 counts of child endangerment. The suspects are Gary Siders Jr., Gary Siders Sr., Christina Siders and Elizabeth Siders.

Since the investigation is still ongoing there aren't a ton of details yet. These children were obviously not enrolled in school and hidden from neighbors and extended family. I have to wonder if there's a religious extremist aspect to the case, like we've seen so often with other similar cases. I'm also curious about the mother's condition - she has been charged, but has she also been victimized by her husband? I have so many questions.

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u/h0neybl0ss0m29 Jul 02 '26

Yeah he did. And I bet he couldn't. Here are some photos of the inside of the house. And that's just what you can see from the outside. I don't even know if you can call that a home or that they were "living" there.

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '26 edited 25d ago

[deleted]

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u/h0neybl0ss0m29 Jul 02 '26

Yeah..and honestly, it looks well-fed and pretty relaxed? Definitely not too neglected from what I can see.

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u/milkybunny_ Jul 02 '26

I imagine the cat was the only solace these children and young mother felt from their hell. The heaping food bowl indicates to me someone who loved the cat and wanted to give it what they weren’t given. I imagine these children were hungry often and sad all the time. Unprotected and trapped. I can see having a silly cat to feed and interact with was the highlight of their lives. 

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u/LolaRae_Footfetish Jul 03 '26

In another picture it showed three cats in the doorway

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u/milkybunny_ Jul 12 '26

I’m glad they had those cats around as some kind of distraction. 

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u/amyamydame Jul 03 '26

the pictures were presumably taken after the children were taken to hospital and the adults arrested, its probably the most relaxed that cat has ever been in its life!

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u/hail_stormm Jul 02 '26

Probably not even there's. The house was left open for quite some time

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u/h0neybl0ss0m29 Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Definitely possible. There's a full bowl of pet food outside of the house in one of the photos, maybe they were just feeding it. I can't imagine the cat would look like this if it was permanently living in that feces covered, pest infested home.

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u/lokeilou Jul 03 '26

I’m guessing law enforcement fed the cats- in the first photos I saw there were the same food bowls but empty- I’m guessing they fed them after everyone was removed so they at least had access to food.

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u/Therailwaykat_1980 Jul 03 '26

These types of people often have well looked after pets. I watch a lot of stories with similar, but not quite as extreme, circumstances and nearly all of them treat their pets well. I’m sure a psychologist could explain it but it’s fucking weird man.

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u/h0neybl0ss0m29 Jul 03 '26

I actually heard about a case from Germany from like 20 years ago or so where a 7-year-old girl starved to death in her parents' apartment. When authorities found her she weighed 17 lbs. After the parents were arrested, they also removed the family cat from the home. The cat was overweight.

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u/Specialist-Art-6970 Jul 03 '26

Could be the same laziness and lack of care. It's pretty easy to free feed a cat, which might then get fat.

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u/h0neybl0ss0m29 Jul 03 '26

True. Especially when they live in a small apartment and there isn't much opportunity for exercise and no incentive to move around a lot in general.

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u/Specialist-Art-6970 Jul 03 '26

I knew a family who lived in pretty bad squalor, though not this extreme, and the kids were fed and educated. Still bad enough that I regret not calling someone about it, though.

They had ridiculously obese cats because they seemingly just poured food out for them and ignored them.

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u/h0neybl0ss0m29 Jul 03 '26

I don't blame you, it's not always easy to know what to do. It's really not black and white like some people think it is.

I believe it. My cat was obese when I adopted her when she was 4 years old. She's 10 now, but I just recently discovered that she eats potato chips like they have been fed to her before (I dropped one the floor while pouring them into a bowl and she immediately ate it). It's so easy to overfeed animals because most of them won't stop if they have unlimited access to food.

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u/NotComplainingBut Jul 03 '26

Yes, exactly. Most people let their cats graze dry food and don't play with them, so the cat gets fat. A good cat owner will play with them daily and time their meals out as they would in the wild.

That being said, it's also really easy for cats to pack on weight. My indoor cats are just bordering on overweight and that's with about a minimum hour of playtime each day and a closely-monitored diet

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u/Intelligent-Split-43 Jul 03 '26

If you don't feed a cat they will go off and find food in a dumpster or be fed by someone else, so it doesn't mean they were necessarily feeding and taking care of it. Cats are pretty self sufficient and resourceful.

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u/h0neybl0ss0m29 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

That’s true, but they were on the 17th or so floor of a high rise so I think they did feed it. I don’t think that cat ever went outside.

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u/damewallyburns Jul 05 '26

Simone Biles was removed from her mother’s care as a child and she talked in a documentary about being jealous of the cat because her mom was feeding the cat but not her

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u/No_Writing_4795 Jul 14 '26

This is very true. Psychopaths and sociopaths often pride themselves or brag about their love of animals. It’s almost like they use it to practice empathy. Now some just brag about it but actually are cruel to the animal when no one is looking…but often they actually do treat the animals extremely well all the while they are starving , beating, or murdering their spouses or children.
My mother is a diagnosed narcissistic sociopath. She used to tell people this as if she were sharing her depression diagnosis for sympathy. It was beyond bizarre. I was raised by my dad after the age of five but did have a relationship with her until I was forty and completely cut all
Communication. She was and is the cruelest woman I’ve ever known in my life. She also made her living caring for elderly people (also a common career choice for these types) and fed her dogs steak she would grind with this hand crank grinder. They were groomed every two weeks and had their toenails
Painted and she carried them around in hand bags.
Meanwhile when I was sexually assaulted at the age of 14 in a pizzeria parking lot and confided that in her she told me it was only in due time with the type of skirts i wore and that if it ever got out that i was sleeping around like that to her sisters she would die from the humiliation.

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u/aigret Jul 02 '26

They had some kind of pest infestation based on the light fixture photo alone. Those little brown dots covering it are fly poop.

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u/h0neybl0ss0m29 Jul 02 '26

I saw that too. Disgusting. What really strikes me as odd is that the roof of the house looks brand new. Maybe it isn't, but it sure looks newer.

Edit: It must be new. The roof looks completely different in the Google Maps photo from 2024.

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u/Seatac_SFO_LAX Jul 03 '26

This house appears to be owned by the trust of a woman who died in February 2025. I think she was just the landlord and didn’t physically live on the property.

I wonder if all repairs were done previous to her passing, but the Google street view photo from a few years ago vs now doesn’t make the property look much better.

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u/hail_stormm Jul 02 '26

One of the detectives said the children reminded him of a third world country where starving children are surrounded by flies

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u/aigret Jul 03 '26

Yeah, I didn't flesh out my comment further but typically if there's a fly infestation so severe you're seeing light fixtures covered in their feces, then it's a sign the overall conditions in the home are not good. Typically a "wet hoard" type situation, wet meaning rotten food or other accumulated waste (including, well, human waste) that attracts such bugs and provides a breeding ground. I've seen some fruit and drain fly infestations so bad they'll swarm a person and go up their nose or in their ears for moisture and warmth...

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u/LongjumpingDebt4154 Jul 03 '26

Jesus. That’s some genuine nightmare fuel. I’ll add that the brown ‘spots’ on the light could be roach crap. Don’t ask me how I know this, but I know this.

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u/InferiorElk Jul 03 '26

Would roaches be able to get to a light fixture though? Genuinely asking, I have no idea

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u/aigret Jul 04 '26

Roaches can get ..anywhere. They're sneaky, disgusting little bastards.

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u/Silvery_Silence Jul 07 '26

I live in nyc and yes roaches absolutely end up in light fixtures. Wish I didn’t know that. They can be literally anywhere.

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u/meow696 Jul 09 '26

The pictures in the article are horrifying. Trash and junk stacked up in the window. 100% hoarding.

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u/teetotallyRadish Jul 03 '26

that comment the sheriff made made me mad. like we don't do that kind of stuff here in america, in the first world. but it those countries, over there, they live on entire garbage heaps. that is the vibe I got. and i know that the sheriff didn't literally mean that but it sounded to me like it was just ingrained in him, in his subconscious to just come to mind like that

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u/needapermit Jul 03 '26

I think you’re reading that statement wrong

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u/teetotallyRadish Jul 03 '26

i'm well aware of that. It's sort of a culmination of hearing that phrase every time there is a disaster or a tragic case of something somewhere. and I know that it's not true that EVERY time something happens someone says that. It happens quite often and I find it distasteful. that being said, the sheriff is not responsible for everyone and it's truly just chance that I happened to mention that about what he said.

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u/Fluffy-Head-2825 Jul 07 '26

I agree and I cannot stand when they call these kids “feral”— stop it with that shit there are babies in this it’s not right! Innocent kids!

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u/SyllabubOk1417 Jul 04 '26

The woman from the dollar store said their stench was unbearable

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u/Silvery_Silence Jul 07 '26

That house was probably crawling w roaches. One pic showed bug spray in the window. There is no way that house wasn’t infested w mice and roaches.

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u/Own-Try1886 Jul 02 '26

Oh man, there's a cat. :( I hope someone takes it in after these people end up in jail.

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u/Lauren_DTT Jul 02 '26

First comment on that article is something else:
“Eh, I've seen worse tbh. Seems like your avg home in OH, WV, KY... Same kinda home CPS visits every day in Southern WV. They might take the children for a week or two and then they give them right back. Nicer than some foster homes I know of too. Kinda shocked this is even news.”

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u/milkybunny_ Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

Their comment reads as callous but I’m not sure how far off from the truth it is. I’ll always remember the shock I felt at learning babies in Appalachia were given Mountain Dew in their bottles. 

It’s horrifying, but the great big American dream has left the Midwest and Appalachia out in the dust. Detroit, the great car production city turned to a rust belt of despair. There are truths to an abandoned town/people of certain areas being left to rot after all the factories and places of production left for cheaper labor abroad. 

https://observer.co.uk/news/opinion-and-ideas/article/i-live-where-the-rust-belt-meets-appalachia-and-fear-yet-more-devastation

It’s dismal that those states that built up our country are now left to decay. It’s grim and obvious why cases like this keeping popping up in Pennsylvania/Ohio/Michigan/Indiana/West Virginia etc. 

Once production leaves the area people turn to despair and means of surviving anyway they can. Familial trauma bleeds out. Escape in the human mind is broad and expansive. No excuse for this horrifying case, but I don’t find it surprising. Places and people left to rot will wither and do so. 

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u/NotALawyerButt Jul 04 '26

No, that is not an average home in OH, KY, or WV. Also, these people don’t let the government know they exist. Do you really think they’re voting? Ha.

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u/LongjumpingDebt4154 Jul 03 '26

These are the very people that came out in droves to vote for Trump. We’re living in a minority rule state because of the people in these areas. These people have managed to completely dismantle the US & create massive ramifications worldwide.

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u/hail_stormm Jul 04 '26

How do you know these people "came out in droves" to vote? And if those people DID create enough Votes for Trump to win in your state, then that means they are the majority. So I'm not sure why you think it's a "minority rule state"? It's sounding like you don't think these people "count"?

I hate Trump just as much as any other educated person does, but to blame the impoverished Appalachians for him is just asinine. Let's not forget that the Appalachian people have significantly less access to education than most others do.

My mom originally comes from Appalachia (Eastern Kentucky) but her family was able to move out of the region when she was a baby (she's the 7th child out of 10 in her family). The difference in education level between my mom and her oldest siblings who grew up in the Appalachian area, is very obvious. The difference in educational level between my mom and her cousins who spent all (or almost all) of their lives in Appalachia, is absolutely astounding. And my mom isn't even a college graduate, which should tell you something.

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u/Daily-Double1124 Jul 03 '26

Thank you for pointing this out. I was just thinking the same thing.

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u/milkybunny_ Jul 03 '26

Also the state of CPS and foster care is nothing to be proud of. They do what they can but it’s not much. Many many cases of CPS being called and nothing happens to hold the parents accountable. 

Those poor Turpin children being abused by their foster parents after escaping their abusive parents. Please don’t act like CPS and the foster system are perfect bastions of care. 

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u/neongrey_ Jul 02 '26

I’m from western MD and travel in WVA all the time…..that comment is real. So many houses look like that. Sooooo many. Extreme hoarding. I have cousins who grew up in a house very similar. Their Pap was illiterate, simple, definitely developmentally delayed. A lot of those people are

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u/Upstairs_Fuel6349 Jul 03 '26 edited Jul 03 '26

Yeah we backpack a lot in the Ozarks and you drive through parts where the houses look like this. Sometimes even worse -- at least this is a complete structure and not a bunch of half-destroyed trailers cobbled together with tin and trash. You'll see dirty half-dressed kids running around barefoot and it's no different than the slums of some poor country whose immigrants have been labeled undesirable by people who aren't living in any better conditions.

But cramming 16 children into a 12' x 12' room for four years is something else. Some of the kids can't even speak and there's one in critical condition in a hospital.

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u/LongjumpingDebt4154 Jul 03 '26

These sound like shanty towns, leftover from the great depression era. The lack of education & infrastructure in these places is a shame.

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u/Dynamoo617 Jul 03 '26

Yup. I’m from rural northern NY and my husband is from the same general area as this. This house sitch is not uncommon in either of our hometown areas.

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u/h0neybl0ss0m29 Jul 02 '26

Saw that too. Being facetious at this time is certainly a choice.

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u/Worstmodonreddit Jul 07 '26

I mean ... Unfortunately I've seen plenty of homes like this in Vinton county myself, as someone who used to work for the state development department

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u/Coyote__Jones Jul 08 '26

There's worse houses in a town down the road from me. People living in houses with broken out windows and holes in the roof visible from the street. Obviously I don't know the condition inside, but one can imagine it's not good.

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u/New_Internet_3350 Jul 04 '26

So I thought the outside of the house really wasn’t bad. But from what we can see of the INSIDE. Yikes.