If you can't supervise 11 children without cages, then don't take them in

'It just didn't look right'
Trial witness: Cages used for discipline
Kropko, M. R. Cincinnati Post, Dec. 2, 2006, News pg A1.

NORWALK, Ohio -- A mother accused of caging some of her 11 adopted, special-needs children sent one child to a cage for the night for asking to use the bathroom before scheduled times, a witness testified Friday.

"I was hoping to get out of there real quick," said Carlyle Smith, 54, of Norwalk, who was working for a company that provides baby sitters and visited the home of Sharen and Michael Gravelle in October 2003.

While on a four-hour visit to size up their home, Smith said a boy asked at mid-afternoon to use the bathroom and was told by an angry Sharen Gravelle that it wasn't his scheduled time.

"She told him to go to his cage until morning," Smith said.

Smith testified that he met with Michael Gravelle after that at the small chapel on their property and Gravelle told him, "I consider myself to be Moses."

The Gravelles are charged with 16 counts of felony child endangering and eight misdemeanor child endangering charges. If convicted, they face one to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $10,000 for each felony count.

Huron County Sheriff Dick Sutherland testified that he went to the Gravelle house Sept. 9, 2005, to investigate a report of children in cages and promptly concluded, "It just didn't look right."

"I had never seen anything that compares to this kind of child neglect, child endangering," the sheriff testified. "The first thing that grabbed my attention was the smell of urine."

"We observed several enclosures, cages, and we assumed the children had been sleeping there," he said. Sutherland described what he saw as "wood-framed enclosures with rabbit wire and they were painted." The cages had linens and some had mattresses, Sutherland said.

The Gravelles deny that they abused the children and have said they had to keep their youngsters in enclosed beds to protect them. The children suffered from problems such as fetal alcohol syndrome and a disorder that involves eating nonfood items.

The children ranged in age from 1 to 14 when authorities removed them in September 2005 from the Gravelle home in rural Wakeman, about 60 miles west of Cleveland. The youngsters were placed in foster care last fall and the couple lost custody in March.