toledoblade.com --

WAKEMAN, Ohio - The caller to Huron County Job and Family Services last month had an incredible, disturbing story to tell: During a sales call last year at a Clarksfield Township home, he said he had seen a little girl kept inside a homemade cage.

The mid-August phone call triggered an investigation that led Huron County authorities Friday to remove 11 special-needs children from the home of their adoptive parents.

Inside the two-story house owned by Michael and Sharen Gravelle, nine of the children slept in boxes fashioned from wooden slats and wire netting. Some had mats or blankets to lie on, others had nothing, investigators said yesterday.

"Imagine a dog kennel, only not stainless steel but wood," sheriff's Lt. Randy Sommers said. "None was big enough for a child to stand in."

The Gravelles denied during a custody hearing Monday in Huron County Juvenile Court that they abused or neglected the children, who range in age from 1 to 14. No criminal charges had been filed yesterday.

Sutherland

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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 an 11th child. Erich Dumbeck, director of the county Department of Job and Family Services, said the children, who were removed from the home Friday, have been placed temporarily in four foster homes.

Officials described the children as well-fed, calm, and healthy, and said they were adjusting well to their new homes.

A pig stands in the front yard of a home on St. John Road in Clarksfield Township from which 11 disabled children were removed.
( ASSOCIATED PRESS )

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"The one thing I immediately noticed is that they were all friendly," said Lieutenant Sommers, who helped remove the youngsters from the Gravelle home.

Mr. Dumbeck said his department had no prior contact with the Gravelles, who adopted their children from other counties and through private agencies.

"We're trying to determine exactly where these kids came from," he said. "I know they're not from Huron County."

'After the fact'

That fact, he said, limited what his department could do when it received the belated report about the cages.

Lieutenant Sommers said authorities were hesitant to act right away because the caller's information was months old, and they had no other complaints about the treatment of the children.

The salesman's report was "way after the fact," he said. "We haven't been able to talk to this person. ... We had very scant information and we weren't sure it was reliable."

But on Friday afternoon, Children Services caseworker Jo Johnson decided to go to the house and see if she could inspect the accommodations, Lieutenant Sommers said. A short time later, she called the lieutenant.

"She said, 'Randy, the cages are there and I saw a child in a cage,' " the lieutenant said.

Three hours later, Job and Family Services officials and sheriff's deputies arrived at the home with a search warrant and found the cages.

According to an affidavit filed by Lieutenant Sommers in Norwalk Municipal Court, the Gravelles spoke with Ms. Johnson "and admitted [to her] that most of the 11 children are frequently caged for 'protection' from themselves and each other."

Investigators consulted with Dr. Gregory C. Keck, according to an affidavit supporting the search of the home south of Wakeman, about 70 miles southeast of Toledo.

Dr. Keck, the founder of the Cleveland-based Attachment and Bonding Center of Ohio, told The Blade he had a brief conversation in August with a Huron County Children Services caseworker about the case.

"You don't need to call me to know you shouldn't have kids in cages," he said he told the caller.

Ms. Johnson reported that the home smelled strongly of urine.

"If any of you folks had the opportunity to go to that residence and see what we saw, you would be appalled," Huron County Sheriff Richard Sutherland said at a news conference yesterday.

Cages upstairs

Lieutenant Sommers said the cages were found in the upstairs of the home, a wood-frame house with a full second story in the rear and a partial upper story in the front. The children slept in four upstairs bedrooms.

One of the bedrooms contained six cages, stacked two high upon each other against one wall, with an aisle of about five feet between dressers set against the opposite wall.

A second bedroom contained two cages, stacked upon each other, and the door to a third bedroom was blocked by stockade-type fencing, with a dresser pushed against the doorway from outside. Inside that room were a set of homemade bunk beds, Lieutenant Sommers said.

"They were not the size you could fit a mattress on," he said. "They were very small."

The fourth bedroom, apparently used by two of the older children, had a pair of twin-size mattresses on the floor.

The insides of the cages were lined with "hardware cloth" -criss-crossed sections of what he called "heavy-gauge wire" used to keep rodents out of gardens.

In one of the cages, the wire lining had been partially ripped open from the inside. "Someone was trying to get out," he said.

The cages varied in size, with the average dimensions roughly 4 feet long, 40 inches tall, and 30 inches wide, the sheriff said.

None of the enclosures was equipped with a lock, but all had battery-powered alarms with a circuit-breaker switch that would signal if the door was opened, Lieutenant Sommers said. Each alarm had a keypad to allow a user to enter a code to disable the siren. The children told authorities they slept in the cages, Lieutenant Sommers said.

"One little boy said he slept in his cage for three years," he said. "And he just slept on the bare floor."

He described the cages as "brightly painted" in colors such as blue, red, green, and yellow.

Authorities said the children were home-schooled. Neighbors said the family kept to itself but described the children as appearing to be happy youngsters who sometimes played outside and walked by themselves along St. John Road.

"The kids would play outside; they didn't appear malnourished," said Leah Hunter, who lives two houses from the family. Sherri Hall, who lives next door to the Gravelles, said she thought it was unusual for them to have so many children but never noticed anything amiss at the home. "Like anybody, you'd think that house wasn't big enough for 11 children," she said.

According to property records at the Huron County Auditor's office, the home is 1,560 square feet. The three-acre lot it sits on includes several outbuildings, including a red mobile home used as a school and a small, two-story building with white siding that served as a religious "sanctuary," authorities said.

In front of that building sits a wooden cross surrounded by a rock garden. Around the property were several pens containing a pig, chickens, dogs, geese, and ducks.

No one answered the door.

Lieutenant Sommers said that before Friday, deputies had been called to the home twice in the last five years. Last year, one of the adopted boys, who was then 12, ran away but was found unharmed the same day. In 2000, deputies were called to settle a dispute between the Gravelles and a neighbor.

Neither of the Gravelles has a criminal record in Huron County. According to documents filed in Huron County Common Pleas Court, Mrs. Gravelle, now 57, filed for a legal separation in March, 2001 after 14 years of marriage, citing "extreme cruelty and gross neglect of duty." That request, and a counterclaim by Mr. Gravelle, now 56, were dismissed in October 2001.

The Gravelles were certified to adopt children in 1996 by Huron County Children Services, and the children were adopted over time from a mix of private and public agencies, said Carmen Stewart, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services.

In Ohio, parents who are interested in adopting must go through a criminal background check, a physical, and a home study, which may take up to 180 days.

Additionally, they must submit four references, she said.

Blade Staff Writer Robin Erb contributed to this report.

Contact Steve Murphy at:
smurphy@theblade.com
or 419-724-6078.

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