If you cannot handle 11 special needs children, you should not adopt them

Parents get 2 years for using cages
Mother defends actions; boy says he is 'thankful' to be in new foster home
Grand Rapids Press,Feb 16, 2007, pg. A5

NORWALK, Ohio -- Sharen and Michael Gravelle pleaded for understanding at their sentencing hearing Thursday, saying they had some of their 11 adopted, special-needs children sleep in wire-and- wood cages to help control their destructive behavior.

"What do you do with these kids?" Michael Gravelle asked. "I prayed constantly for the answer."

One of the children wanted to jump out a second-floor window, Sharen Gravelle said. "Would you prefer that we let them jump? Either way, we'd be here. The difference is they're still alive," she said.

As the couple was sentenced to two years in prison, a boy and a girl, sitting elbow to elbow in the courtroom, smiled.

"I'm thankful that part of my life is behind me," the boy said in a statement read earlier in the hearing.

He wrote he is thankful he has new foster parents. "Because of them, I don't have to steal food. I can use the bathroom whenever I want. Never again will I have to sleep in a box."

The 11 children, who suffered from problems such as fetal alcohol syndrome and a disorder that involves eating nonfood items, ranged in age from 1 to 14 when authorities removed them in September 2005 from the Gravelles' home in Wakeman, about 60 miles west of Cleveland. They were placed in foster care in fall 2005 and the couple lost custody last March.

The judge ordered that names and other information, including ages, of the two children who appeared in court be kept confidential to protect their privacy.

Michael Gravelle said the enclosures resulted from the suggestions of a social workers, who recommended strict rules to improve the children's behavior.

"I'm begging you," Michael Gravelle told the judge. "I do not deserve jail."

The girl said the Gravelles "are grown adults who know the difference between right and wrong. So I ask that they get as much time in jail for as long as my siblings had to be in cages."