3 UNNAMED CHILDREN - 8, 9 and 11 yo/ Charged: Grandmother; Edwina Louis, Mother; Bobbi Sue Pack, Mother's BF; Juan Sanchez and Leah Dillon - Wheelersburg, OH

Four charged after child sends e-mailed plea for rescue from abuse
mother, Bobbi Sue Pack

Feb. 13, 2014 at 12:54 AM

WHEELERSBURG, Ohio, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- Four people were charged with keeping children chained to their beds after one alleged victim emailed a plea for help, police in Ohio said Wednesday.

Three of the suspects were in custody, including the children's grandmother, Edwina Louis, 52, WSAZ-TV in Huntington, W. Va., reported. Investigators were seeking a fourth.

Scioto County deputies came to the home in Wheelersburg, a small town on the Ohio River southeast of Cincinnati, after a teacher at Ohio Virtual Academy received an e-mail from one of the children, WTTE-TV in Columbus, Ohio, said.

The two older children told investigators they were chained to their beds much of the time, freed only to do schoolwork on their computer. They said they were beaten and paddled and given little food.

All four children were taken to Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, WTTE said.

Louis' daughter, Bobbi Sue Pack, 31, and Juan Sanchez, 44, were also arrested. Leah Dillon, 24, who was described as leaving the house quickly when child welfare workers arrived, is being sought.

Scioto County Sheriff Mark Donini told WSAZ injuries observed on the children's bodies backed up their story.

Louis denied abusing her grandchildren.

"They're accusing me of tying up my grandkids, not feeding them," she told WSAZ. "They accused me of biting my grandkids. I got no teeth. I hit with my hand and I ain't got much strength as it is."

She said she was trying to get the children out of the house after two of them reported Sanchez "did bad things." He is also charged with sexual assault.

Jill Bays, a neighbor, described the family as very quiet.

"I just can't believe that was going on in that house," Bays said. "I only saw two little kids. I never knew older kids were there. I thought it was just babies."

Neighbors shocked to learn of abuse inside Scioto County home

By Holly Zachariah The Columbus Dispatch
Friday February 14, 2014 6:11 AM

WHEELERSBURG, Ohio — Last fall, a couple of kids from 1103 Collingwood Ave. pedaled their bikes up and down the dead-end street. Neighbors say the children sometimes splashed around in a blue plastic kiddie pool in the side yard.

One of them occasionally stopped to corral Shiloh, the black-and-white cat that wandered the neighborhood whenever she slipped out of the one-story house the family had rented since August.

But the neighbors who lived closest to the house that investigators now say was a den of abuse never knew that four children were living there. They say they would see one at a time, maybe two. Never four. Autumn Collier, who lives right across the street, said she saw the kids so infrequently, she thought they might live with a father somewhere and just visit sometimes.

“The whole family, if you saw them out, they would wave. But we never really got to know them. I didn’t even know their names,” Collier said yesterday. “I guess you never really know what goes on behind closed doors.”

Scioto County sheriff’s detectives say what happened there was unbearable. Three children, ages 8, 9 and 11 years old, were chained and tied to their beds, Capt. David Hall said. They went hungry, the food kept under padlock and rationed. He said evidence shows that the children were beaten with whips and belts.

A 2-year-old girl appears to have escaped abuse, Hall said. Still, all four children were removed from the home by Scioto County Children Services on Feb. 5, six days after one of the older girls sent an online message to a teacher at her virtual school in Toledo begging her to send help because she and her siblings were being tied up and beaten.

Children Services Director Lorra Fuller said she couldn’t talk about the specifics of the case or answer why it took several days to take the children. But she said a standard and proper investigation followed the tip and the children were removed immediately after an emergency court order was granted. They are now in foster care.

On Tuesday, authorities arrested the children’s grandmother, 52-year-old Edwina Louis; their mother, Bobbi Sue Pack, 31, who is Louis’ daughter; and Juan Carlos Sanchez, 44, Pack’s boyfriend and the father of the 2-year-old.

Sanchez has been charged with two counts of rape, and all three have been charged with multiple counts of endangering children. Prosecutors expect to present evidence to a grand jury today and seek additional charges. The three suspects declined to be interviewed yesterday.

Now that the house sits empty — save for the family’s husky that the landlord stops by to let out now and then — and the sheriff’s cruisers have left the street, the neighbors are struggling with questions.

“How can something like that go on under your nose?” asked Collier, 32, whose family has lived on Collingwood at least 15 years. “Why didn’t we pay attention?”

But the neighbors shouldn’t beat themselves up, Hall said. “People like this, they fly under the radar for a reason.”

Roger Armstrong, 76, has lived next door to 1103 Collingwood for 31 years. It’s a nice neighborhood, he said, and most everyone has been there a long time. He gestured toward a nearby house and said the man who lived there died at age 96. That’s how long people stay there, he said with a chuckle.

He pointed to the now-empty rental a few feet to the east of his house and said quietly, “Hang 'em."

Like Collier, he saw only two children. The family didn’t have a car, and he said they kept to themselves and had few visitors. But almost every day, he said, the grandmother would ride her scooter up the street to the Ridge Mini Mart on the corner and almost always come back with Pepsi.

“Now it’s just unbelievable,” he said. “Unbelievable.”

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/02/14/neighbors-shocked-to-learn-of-abuse.html

Published: February 14, 2014 3:00 a.m.

With horror over, abused kids savor ‘little things’

3 Ohio victims getting joy from ice cream, snacks


AMANDA LEE MYERS

CINCINNATI – Just days after being freed from a nightmarish ordeal of abuse, three Ohio children who were chained to their beds and deprived of food are now relishing the seemingly mundane – attending school, interacting with other kids and going out for ice cream for the first time, authorities said Thursday.

The children, removed from the home last week after one girl sent an email pleading for help to a teacher at their online school, are adjusting well after months of beatings, sexual assaults and physical restraint so severe they couldn’t move from their beds, Scioto County sheriff’s Capt. David Hall said.

“They’re lucky to be alive,” he said.

The children have been living with a loving foster family and enjoying normalcy, perhaps for the first time in their lives, Hall said.
“They told us they never had ice cream or a milkshake before,” Hall said.

In court documents obtained by The Associated Press, authorities describe “horrific” conditions the children were subjected to by their mother, stepfather and grandmother in their home in Wheelersburg, in southern Ohio’s Appalachian country.

Since at least May, the three adults are accused of tying and chaining the 9- and 11-year-old girls and their 8-year-old brother to their beds so they were “unable to move or get out of the bed” for weeks at a time, according to arrest documents filed in Portsmouth Municipal Court.

The stepfather is accused of raping each girl multiple times while forcing the other to watch, the documents said.

The children also described being forced to take their clothes off to be beaten with belts and paddles, and they had marks and extensive scars to match their stories, Hall said.

Hall said one of the adults admitted to tying up the children as punishment “because they were stealing food.” Deputies found locks on the refrigerator and kitchen cupboards in the home, he said.

The children’s mother, stepfather and grandmother were arrested Tuesday on child endangerment charges.

Attorneys for the adults either declined to comment or didn’t return phone messages.

Hall said he expects more charges to be filed after a grand jury considers the case. Their next court date is Thursday.

During interviews with detectives, Hall said the kids were ecstatic to be able to choose snacks out of a vending machine.
“These little things we take for granted, they were just thrilled,” Hall said.

Hall said he didn’t know which of the sisters sent the email for help, which went to a teacher at the Toledo-based Virtual Academy on Jan. 30.

“I’m sure like most kids she trusted in her teacher that she would get her help,” he said. “We don’t know if the opportunity was there that maybe no adults were around. Or maybe she just had enough.”

At the request of the sheriff’s office, the school declined to make the teacher available, saying she was a potential witness in the investigation.

The children’s stepfather, originally from the Virgin Islands, has denied the accusations and wasn’t cooperating with investigators, Hall said. He fathered only one of the four children in the home, a 2-year-old girl, who was not believed to have been harmed and joined her siblings in their new foster home.

http://www.journalgazette.net/article/20140214/LOCAL09/302149916/1002/LOCAL

I knew the details would be far worse than we knew at first.  God bless those poor children.  This will have life long lasting affects on them. 

Evil, evil, evil POSs.