Couple cages adopted children

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5280789,00.html

Ohio parents claim cages were built to protect adopted children
06:27 PM EDT Sep 20
THOMAS J. SHEERAN

CLEVELAND (AP) - The Ohio parents under investigation for having some of their 11 adopted children sleep in cages defended their actions, saying the homemade "enclosures" were meant to protect youngsters who set fires and injured one another.

Michael and Sharen Gravelle of Wakeman have denied abusing or neglecting the children, aged one to 14, who have conditions that include autism and fetal alcohol syndrome. No charges have been filed, and the children, whose situation was discovered last week, now are in foster care.

A prosecutor on Thursday said he filed complaints earlier this week against the couple in order to remove the children from the home. A trial was set for Oct. 27 to determine if the removal was justified.

The couple authorized their lawyer to issue a statement Wednesday evening explaining their actions.

"The children have been out of control and have caused serious harm to themselves and each other," said lawyer David Sherman, adding that Michael Gravelle built the enclosures to provide the children with a secure space while their parents slept at night.

"The Gravelles love and miss their children and are devastated and broken-hearted with worry, since their children have been ripped away from them," Sherman said.

"Their motives and intentions were good. They would never harm a child."

The children could be returned to the Gravelles after the Oct. 27 trial, said Christopher Mushett, the county's juvenile court administrator.

Huron County prosecutor Russell Leffler said in a statement he plans to meet with law enforcement officials on Monday.

The Gravelles received "glowing reports" from private agencies that reviewed them for the adoption of one of the children, said Jim McCafferty, director of the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services, which placed the boy with the couple.

Erich Dumbeck, director of the Huron County Department of Job and Family Services, said there are no limits to how many children can be placed in a home but that his agency makes the child's welfare a key factor. The Gravelle adoptions were arranged outside the county.

Ohio doesn't require home visits after an adoption. Dumbeck said his agency did not have contact with the family before Friday's court-ordered search, which resulted from a complaint that he won't discuss.

The Ohio couple are white and their adoptive children are black, a group that historically has been harder to place. In 2002, the most recent figures available, there were 127,942 children awaiting adoption in the United States, including 54,832 black youngsters, according to the Child Welfare League of America. The organization didn't tally the number of special needs children.

Keith Alford, a Syracuse University associate professor who has written extensively on adoption, said social workers may be unaware of the demands of caring for disabled children and may be anxious to find them homes.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

 

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http://www.wcpo.com/news/2005/local/09/17/caged_folo.html

More Revealed About Adoptive Parents Of Caged Children

RELATED WCPO STORIES
Parents Who Caged Children Co-Plaintiffs In Adoption Lawsui (9/17/05)

Adoption Process Questioned In "Caged" Children Case (9/14/05)

Two Of 11 Children Found In Cages Adopted From Here (9/13/05)

Reported by: A.P.
Web produced by: Neil Relyea
Photographed by: 9News
9/17/2005 1:55:49 PM

WAKEMAN, Ohio (AP) -- The modest, two-story home where authorities say a couple confined their adoptive children in small cages sits off a winding, hard-to-find country road in a sparsely populated, rural town where neighbors are separated by cornfields and privacy is not hard to find.

So it makes sense that few folks here knew much about Michael and Sharen Gravelle, the parents of 11 disabled children.

But over the past week, authorities, neighbors and court documents have helped form a picture of a working class, middle-aged white couple with a history of marital problems who traveled across Ohio and other states to find the neediest children.

The Gravelles adopted black youngsters with ailments such as autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, HIV and pica, an eating disorder in which children compulsively eat nonfood items such as dirt and rocks.

At some point, the couple began putting the children in homemade, wooden 3-1/2 foot tall cages at night.

The cages, painted bright blue, red and yellow, were surrounded by chicken wire and plywood and rigged with alarms to signal when the cages were opened.

No charges have been filed, and the children, aged one to 14, have been placed in foster care.

The Gravelles have not commented publicly or been at their home, where toys and bicycles share the yard with roosters, dogs and a black, potbellied pig whose pen is about twice the size of the children's sleeping quarters.

Their attorney, David Sherman of Westlake, said the Gravelles have been portrayed unfairly in the media.

He said the children were not caged but kept in "enclosures" built around bunk beds to stop them from doing things such as setting fires, eating batteries and cutting themselves.

"There was no cruelty, excessive restraint or risk of harm," Sherman said. "The children were free to leave their beds anytime they wanted."

He said the alarms were meant to alert the parents of when the kids got out of bed so they could be checked on.

Interviews with adoption officials and reviews of court documents show that the Gravelles received thousands of dollars in government adoption subsidies and disability payments for the children -- $4,265 a month in 2001 when the family had eight children.

But local and state authorities say they were not checking up on the Gravelles.

State law doesn't require them to after an adoption is finalized, and Ohio doesn't limit the number of children that can be adopted into one home.

Authorities say they are trying to find out where the youngsters came from and how so many special needs children ended up in one home without raising red flags.

The Associated Press has learned the origins of six of the adoptions.

Three siblings who were removed from their Canton home in 1999 joined the family in 2000; an HIV-positive infant boy was adopted from Cuyahoga County in 2001; and two children, both siblings of another child adopted elsewhere by the Gravelles, were adopted in Hamilton County in 1999.

Officials in Stark and Cuyahoga counties said their reviews of the Gravelles turned up no problems.

Hamilton County confirmed the adoptions but refused to discuss details.

In 2001, Sharen Gravelle accused her husband in court documents of mistreating the children, an allegation he denied.

The couple reconciled and eventually adopted three more children.

It wasn't known if the adoption agencies reviewed the abuse allegation.

Nancy Udolph, an associate professor of sociology at Ashland University, said Friday the divorce filing and accusation would raise questions for any social worker checking the home for subsequent adoptions.

"It's an indication that things are pretty bad," she said. Udolph said it's difficult to understand how the Gravelles went without visits from authorities because of the previous allegation and the number of special needs children already in the home.

The Gravelles appeared to have kept a low profile in Wakeman, a town of about 1,000 people that is more than 98% white.

The children, most given biblical names by their adoptive parents, were home schooled.

Authorities say the family attended services at a church the Gravelles built on their property.

A large wooden cross sits before a small building that appears under construction.

Leah Hunter, a neighbor who lives two houses away from the Gravelles, said she barely knew the couple but often saw the children playing barefoot.

"I knew them as a white couple that took in black children over a period of years," Hunter said. The youngsters looked fine. "They hardly ever wore shoes, but I'm a country girl and for me that's normal."

Adoption experts said the case highlights the difficulty of placing black children -- especially those with disabilities -- in adoptive homes.

In 2002, the most recent figures available, there were 127,942 children awaiting adoption in the United States, including 54,832 black youngsters, according to the Child Welfare League of America.

In Cincinnati, court documents show the Gravelles had joined a 1999 lawsuit against Hamilton County complaining of public-agency resistance to allowing white couples to adopt black children.

The couple was dropped from the lawsuit in 2002 because they weren't cooperating and no one could reach them, according to court documents.

 

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http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050920/NEWS03/509200387/-1/NEWS


Article published Tuesday, September 20, 2005

Parents used cages to punish 11 children
Homemade 'boxes' also served as beds

NORWALK, Ohio - The 11 children removed from a Wakeman, Ohio, area home 11 days ago were confined in homemade cages not just at night, but as punishment during the day too, authorities in Huron County said yesterday.



The Huron County Sheriff's Office issued a statement to that effect after a meeting yesterday afternoon involving that department, the county prosecutor's office, and the Huron County Department of Job and Family Services. The statement indicated authorities intend to gather more evidence before charges, if any, could be filed against Michael and Sharen Gravelle.

"t is clear the children were treated in an unacceptable manner," the statement said. "Confinement in what the adoptive parents called 'boxes' occurred not just at night but as punishment during the day as well. Although most of the 'boxes' were not locked, the children were afraid to leave their 'boxes' at night even to use the bathroom because an alarm would sound and the parents would react in anger."

Of the 11 special-needs children, nine slept in boxes fashioned from wooden slats and wire netting; some had mats or blankets to lie on, while others had nothing, investigators have said.

The children, who range in age from 1 to 14, have been placed in foster care.

Huron County Job and Family Services received a call last month about the children. That mid-August phone call triggered the investigation. On Sept. 9, a caseworker went to the Gravelle home and saw a child in a cage. Three hours later, sheriff's deputies and family services officials arrived at the house with a search warrant.

The sizes of the cages varied, with the average being about 4 feet long, 40 inches tall, and 30 inches wide, a sheriff's deputy said last week.

Family services Director Erich Dumbeck yester-day referred questions to the county prosecutor's office.

Prosecutor Russell Leffler could not be reached for comment.

A spokesman for the sheriff's office declined to say anything beyond the information in the news release.

The prosecutor's office will consider reports from the other departments, plus medical and psychiatric records, which have been subpoenaed, the statement said. "The prosecutor's office is awaiting psychological and psychiatric reports and assessments to determine the extent of the emotional damage before filing the proper charges," the statement said.

Documents filed with the Juvenile Court state the children have conditions such as fetal alcohol syndrome, autism, and pica, a compulsion to eat things not normally consumed as food.

According to records, 10 of the children were adopted by the Gravelles between 1997 and 2000, and adoption was pending for the 11th child.

 

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http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050917/OPINION02/50917046

Article published Saturday, September 17, 2005

Caged children

THEY slept in wood and wire cages stacked on top of each other. Only it wasn’t a kennel and the caged occupants weren’t dogs. They were special-needs children corralled like animals at night in their small Wakeman, Ohio, home. The discovery defies explanation.

But that didn’t stopped the children’s adoptive parents from offering one. Michael and Sharen Gravelle told law enforcement officials that most of their 11 children were often caged for their own protection from themselves and each other.

More likely they needed protection from their parents, who would confine them to cramped cages of plywood and wire measuring roughly 40 inches tall, 30 inches wide, and four feet long — too small for them to stand up. Some were rigged with alarms that sounded downstairs when the doors were opened.

The youngsters, who range in age from 1 to 14, bedded down in their cages on mats, no pillows or blankets. Just like dogs.

Maybe the special-needs children, with conditions that include autism and fetal alcohol syndrome, don’t know better, but the adults who agree to love and care for them to the best of their ability should. Homemade cages to house young children for the night is twisted parenting in the least.

The courts will decide whether such treatment is criminal. But the kids, adopted from an assortment of private and public agencies from different counties and states, deserved better. Apparently lost in the disparate agencies involved in the Gravelle adoptions was any examination of the big picture inside the two-story house about 70 miles southeast of Toledo.

Although the family lived in Huron County for 10 years, none of the adoptions came through that county’s Department of Job and Family Services. So no one within the department apparently knew to keep close tabs on an extraordinary situation that would present enormous challenges for any adoptive household.

It was only after a children’s services investigator, following up on a months-old complaint, visited the Gravelle home recently and spotted a child’s face peering out of a cage that action was initiated.

The children were removed from the home that day by Huron County Sheriff’s deputies and placed with four foster families. The Gravelles deny that they abused or neglected their children, who authorities say appear to be well fed, calm, and healthy.

Dr. Gregory Keck, founder of an Ohio organization that works with adoptive parents of special-needs children, stated the obvious when he said that he “couldn’t imagine any situation in which children should be kept in cages.” At most the confinement he might recommend would be alarms on bedroom doors for children at risk of harming themselves or their siblings.

Before couples can adopt a child in Ohio they must submit to exhaustive scrutiny through background checks and references and open their homes on at least two occasions to social workers to inspect for safety and childproof precautionary measures.

The Gravelles received “glowing reports” by private adoption agencies who reviewed their home before the couple adopted a child born with HIV in 2001 through the Cuyahoga County Department of Children and Family Services. The adoptive parents receive a subsidy of at least $500 a month to care for the child.

It is not clear how much the parents were paid to offset the costs of caring for the other children or if home visits occurred in all cases.

But it’s obvious that somewhere along the way there was a monumental breakdown in support and follow-up of an unusual family that kept largely to itself and put the little ones to bed in brightly colored cages.

 

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More Revealed About Adoptive Parents Of Caged Children
Boys, Girls Placed In Foster Care



UPDATED: 11:31 pm EDT September 19, 2005

WAKEMAN, Ohio -- The modest, two-story home where authorities say a couple confined their adoptive children in small cages sits off a winding, hard-to-find country road in a sparsely populated, rural town where neighbors are separated by cornfields and privacy is not hard to find.

So it makes sense that few folks here knew much about Michael and Sharen Gravelle, the parents of 11 disabled children.

Watch The Report
SLIDESHOW: Images From Scene

But over the past week, authorities, neighbors and court documents have helped form a picture of a working class, middle-aged white couple with a history of marital problems who traveled across Ohio and other states to find the neediest children.

The Gravelles adopted black youngsters with ailments such as autism, fetal alcohol syndrome, HIV and pica, an eating disorder in which children compulsively eat nonfood items such as dirt and rocks.

At some point, the couple began putting the children in homemade, wooden 3½ foot tall cages at night. The cages, painted bright blue, red and yellow, were surrounded by chicken wire and plywood and rigged with alarms to signal when the cages were opened.

No charges have been filed, and the children, aged 1 to 14, have been placed in foster care.

Investigators said the couple could face multiple child abuse and endangerment charges, but they are still gathering information, NBC 4's Duarte Geraldino reported.

Preliminary reports showed that the children are in good physical health, but investigators said they're still waiting on mental health reports on each child to determine the extent of the emotional damage.

The Gravelles have not commented publicly or been at their home, where toys and bicycles share the yard with roosters, dogs and a black, potbellied pig whose pen is about twice the size of the children's sleeping quarters.

Their attorney, David Sherman of Westlake, said the Gravelles have been portrayed unfairly in the media. He said the children were not caged but kept in "enclosures" built around bunk beds to stop them from doing things such as setting fires, eating batteries and cutting themselves.

"There was no cruelty, excessive restraint or risk of harm," Sherman said. "The children were free to leave their beds anytime they wanted."

He said the alarms were meant to alert the parents of when the kids got out of bed so they could be checked on.

In a written statement, investigators said, "The children were afraid to leave their 'boxes' at night, even to use the bathroom, because an alarm would sound and the parents would react in anger."

Interviews with adoption officials and reviews of court documents show that the Gravelles received thousands of dollars in government adoption subsidies and disability payments for the children -- $4,265 a month in 2001 when the family had eight children.

But local and state authorities say they were not checking up on the Gravelles. State law doesn't require them to after an adoption is finalized, and Ohio doesn't limit the number of children that can be adopted into one home.

Authorities say they are trying to find out where the youngsters came from and how so many special needs children ended up in one home without raising red flags.

The Associated Press has learned the origins of six of the adoptions. Three siblings who were removed from their Canton home in 1999 joined the family in 2000; an HIV-positive infant boy was adopted from Cuyahoga County in 2001; and two children, both siblings of another child adopted elsewhere by the Gravelles, were adopted in Hamilton County in 1999.

Officials in Stark and Cuyahoga counties said their reviews of the Gravelles turned up no problems. Hamilton County confirmed the adoptions but refused to discuss details.

In 2001, Sharen Gravelle accused her husband in court documents of mistreating the children, an allegation he denied. The couple reconciled and eventually adopted three more children. It wasn't known if the adoption agencies reviewed the abuse allegation.

Nancy Udolph, an associate professor of sociology at Ashland University, said Friday the divorce filing and accusation would raise questions for any social worker checking the home for subsequent adoptions.

"It's an indication that things are pretty bad," she said.

Udolph said it's difficult to understand how the Gravelles went without visits from authorities because of the previous allegation and the number of special needs children already in the home.

The Gravelles appeared to have kept a low profile in Wakeman, a town of about 1,000 people that is more than 98 percent white. The children, most given biblical names by their adoptive parents, were home schooled. Authorities say the family attended services at a church the Gravelles built on their property. A large wooden cross sits before a small building that appears under construction.

Leah Hunter, a neighbor who lives two houses away from the Gravelles, said she barely knew the couple but often saw the children playing barefoot.

"I knew them as a white couple that took in black children over a period of years," Hunter said. The youngsters looked fine. "They hardly ever wore shoes, but I'm a country girl and for me that's normal."

Adoption experts said the case highlights the difficulty of placing black children -- especially those with disabilities -- in adoptive homes. In 2002, the most recent figures available, there were 127,942 children awaiting adoption in the United States, including 54,832 black youngsters, according to the Child Welfare League of America.

In Cincinnati, court documents show the Gravelles had joined a 1999 lawsuit against Hamilton County complaining of public-agency resistance to allowing white couples to adopt black children. The couple were dropped from the lawsuit in 2002 because they weren't cooperating and no one could reach them, according to court documents.

Previous Stories:

* September 16, 2005: Ohio Couple Accused Of Caging Kids Had Troubled Marriage
* September 13, 2005: Eleven Children Found Caged In Northern Ohio Home

Copyright 2005 by nbc4i.com The Associated Press contributed to this report. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.