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A Vinton County case in which 16 children were rescued from horrifying conditions and four adults now face child endangerment charges has raised a host of questions. One that repeatedly surfaces is how in the world no one noticed what was happening to those children, inside that house.
The answer highlights the crucial role of public school truancy officers and the safeguard we take away from kids when we allow them to be removed from the public school setting without proper monitoring and assessment.
NBC 4 requested records from Gallia County, where it reports the local school district was aware of at least some of the children. In fact, Gary Siders II and Elizabeth Siders were summoned to juvenile court after their oldest six children did not attend a single day of school during the 2021-2022 school year. Those children were enrolled in Addaville Elementary School, according to NBC 4.
It seems, to escape a court date and the eye on the safety and wellbeing of the children that comes with having students in the public school system, Gary and Elizabeth disappeared. According to NBC 4's report, the pair were never served because, despite having a Cheshire, Ohio, mailing address to which they were connected through at least January 2024, their whereabouts were unknown.
Here's the part that also warrants heavy scrutiny. Knowing that six children had disappeared from public record, had not been to school for a year, and that their parents had chosen to respond to a court date by disappearing, Judge Thomas Moulton Jr. dismissed the case on Jan. 7, 2022. He will not answer NBC 4's questions about the case now because "that might reasonably be expected to affect the outcome or impair the fairness of a matter pending or impending in any court."
Four-and-a-half years later, those children and ten others were pulled out of a house where they had allegedly been kept in a 12×12 room one county north, and some had developed severe medical conditions, having also disappeared from the awareness of a single state agency.
Had they ever made it to Addaville Elementary, it's very likely their condition and behavior would have drawn the attention of caring administrators and teachers who did their job and reported what they saw.
But when kids don't have that protection; and when their plight is dismissed by those who could do something about it, there is nothing to stop what they are alleged to have endured -- for years.
Teachers, administrators and truancy officers aren't the bad guys. Sometimes they are the only protectors vulnerable kids have. In the case of the Siders' children, we are left to wonder what might have been. But lawmakers must bear in mind, we also can see the consequences when children are kept away from public schools and no one is watching out for them.