Michael Stravato for The New York TimesInvestigators found 11 children last month in this house in Dayton, Tex. Eight were packed into a single 10-foot-by-10-foot room, some in restraints.
DAYTON, Tex. — A 2-year-old girl was tied up in a restraint attached to her bed. Nearby another 2-year-old child, a boy, was restrained to his bed, too. A third child, a blind 5-year-old girl who appeared to be in a daze, was tied up on a filthy mattress. An 11-year-old boy had a black eye and finger marks on his forearms, and one of his teeth had been knocked out.
Above, Wayne Hardin, a pastor, looking at the yard of the house where 11 children were removed. The home's residents “mainly stayed in the house,” he said.
The house is located on a quiet residential street in Dayton, Tex.
Some toys were outside the house on Tuesday. They were among the 11 children found in a home in this rural town of about 7,200 people 40 miles northeast of Houston, their plight described in a court document filed by the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the state’s child welfare agency. They were discovered last month when a Dayton police sergeant and an investigator with the child welfare agency visited the house in response to a report made to the police alleging physical abuse of the children. Eight of the children were found inside a 10-foot-by-10-foot back bedroom. Though it was about 2 p. m., the room was dark because the window was covered with plywood and there was no light fixture, according to the court filing. Three of the eight children in the room were restrained to their beds at the time the authorities visited. One child told the authorities that the children were placed in restraints while they slept at night and sometimes during the day when they were awake, and another child said they were kept in the room for up to three days at a time. The harness-style cloth restraints, tied around the chests of some of the children and attached to their small beds, were so tight that they had only about one or two feet to maneuver. None of the older children attended schools, the court papers said. Two of the children, infant boys 4 months old and 6 months old, were taken to Texas Children’s Hospital because paramedics called to the scene were concerned they were showing signs of pneumonia and “failure to thrive,” the court filing said. Patrick Crimmins, a spokesman for the child welfare agency, said all 11 of the children had been removed from the home and placed in foster care. The children ranged from infants to 11-year-olds. No criminal charges have been filed against any of the adults who own the home or live there, and no arrests have been made. The police sergeant who visited the house, Doug O’Quinn, said the Dayton Police Department was investigating, along with the Liberty County district attorney’s office. “I would think any time any normal person or any investigator enters a room with children being restrained it would be startling to them,” Sergeant O’Quinn said. “I wouldn’t say it was overly disorderly or filthy. The children had movement. It was just restricted. This is something we take seriously. We are going to present this to a grand jury.” Most of the children removed from the house were the grandchildren of a woman identified in the legal papers as Tanda Marsh-Smith, who lives there with her husband, Odice Smith. Nobody answered the door on Wednesday afternoon. There were two signs in the living room window by the front door: “No Smoking” and “No Trespassing.” A skateboard was propped up next to the door. The children appeared to live in a chaotic environment. One of Ms. Marsh-Smith’s adult children, Mark E. Marsh III, 34, is a registered sex offender who lists the house as his address but was not there at the time the children were removed, the court filing stated. Two 16-year-old boys who ran away from different foster homes were found at the house with a stolen car. The document said that Ms. Marsh-Smith was reported to have had six children removed from her home in Michigan in the early 1980s and had been accused in more recent years of physical and sexual abuse of her grandchildren. The court document states that none of the adults in the home thought there was anything wrong with restraining the children. “All adults in the home were interviewed, in which none of them felt like this was a problem, and stated that they tie the children up for safety,” the legal papers said. Like the other homes alongside it on a quiet residential street, the red-brick house where the children lived has a large front lawn, a long driveway and a spacious backyard. Nearly two dozen people appeared to be living in the home at the time the authorities visited. The court document said that at least 10 adults were in the house, in addition to the children. Three large prefabricated structures, including one red barn-style shed, had recently been placed in the backyard and were occupied by people at night, neighbors said. “I was shocked,” said a neighbor, Wayne Hardin, 59, who is the pastor of Grace Community Baptist Church in Dayton. “The people mainly stayed in the house. They have not had a good relationship with neighbors at all. If you walk on their sidewalk, they consider that their property, and they’ll go out there and holler at people.”
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