Adopted boy 'spent weeks in cage', court told
A boy adopted by a couple accused of caging some of their children today told a court he was sent to a cage for weeks at a time for punishment.
The boy also told the court in Ohio that the enclosure he slept in was small and hot and he did not like it.
The boy was the first of several adopted children expected to testify in the trial of Michael and Sharen Gravelle, who deny abusing some of the 11 adopted, special-needs children in their care.
The couple, who face 16 counts of felony child endangering and eight counts of misdemeanour child endangering, have said they had to keep the youngsters in enclosed beds to protect them.
The children suffered from problems including foetal alcohol syndrome and eating disorders.
“In the summertime it was really hot in there,” the boy said. “We said we liked them because it made us safe, but we really didn’t like them. We said it to make them (Gravelles) happy.”
If convicted, the Gravelles face one to five years in prison.
Two women also took the witness stand today, saying youngsters they cared for lied, stole and misbehaved after they had been removed from the Gravelles’ home.
Anita Thorne said she received two of the children in April, and both left in November because she had to struggle to care for them.
One girl was violent, Thorne said. “She hit me in the back of the head while I was driving because she couldn’t get her way. That did it for me. She could have killed us both.”
Debbie Nottke, who took in three other Gravelle children, said one boy is no longer in her care because of worsening behaviour.
However, she said she still has a boy who prosecutors say slept in a bath for weeks at the Gravelle home because of a bed-wetting problem. She said the youngster has never wet the bed in her home.
The court was told yesterday that the father had planned to leave his job because he made enough money by adopting.
Neighbour Tom Hall said that Gravelle told him years ago: “The children that he had paid pretty good, that he was probably going to quit his job and build an orphanage and get all the children he could.”
Mr Hall also told the jury that he saw the father hose down one of the children outside in 6-7C weather. Mr Hall said he believes it was because the child had a bathroom accident, but he could not recall which of the 11 children it was or when it occurred.
The children ranged in age from one to 14 when authorities removed them from the rural home about 60 miles west of Cleveland. The youngsters were placed in foster care last autumn, and the couple lost custody in March.
The Gravelles deny abusing the children and have said they had to keep the youngsters in enclosed beds to protect them.
Laura Oney, another neighbour, testified that she reported the couple to local family services, which oversee adoption, in 2001, after Michael Gravelle told her one of the children was sleeping in a bath with only a blanket and a pillow.
She said she reported the Gravelles again in 2002 after allegedly seeing Sharen Gravelle hit a child across the back of the legs with a sawn-off broomstick.
On cross examination, Mr Hall said seeing the child being hosed was “one of those things that sticks in your mind”, but he said he did not report the incident to authorities.
Hall told defence lawyer Ken Myers that he often saw the children playing on the swings in their yard and they appeared normal.
After the Gravelles built an addition on to their home for the children, Mr Hall testified that he suspected it was linked to Michael Gravelle’s orphanage plans.
Brenda Conley, a foster mother now caring for one of the Gravelle children, said the boy wet his bed every night when he first joined her home in November but later stopped.
She said he started again, though, after a prosecutor preparing for the case showed him pictures of the cages where children were allegedly forced to sleep.
