US4 min(s) read
Published 13:39 06 Jul 2026 GMT
The attorney representing the mother of 16 children rescued from a home in Ohio has revealed the first thing she asked after being arrested, saying he believes it offers an important insight into who she really is.
As widely reported, police discovered the children, aged between one and 18, on Tuesday (June 30) at a small home in Hamden after executing a search warrant linked to a separate criminal investigation that began four to six weeks earlier.
The children were allegedly confined to a single 12-foot-by-12-foot room surrounded by human waste.
According to investigators, some of the kids struggled to communicate, while the oldest, an 18-year-old woman, is developmentally disabled and unable to write her own name.
Elizabeth Siders, 33, her husband, Gary Siders Jr., 36, and his parents, Gary Siders Sr., 73, and Christina Siders, 77, have all been arrested and charged with 16 counts of second-degree felony child endangerment.
All four defendants have pleaded not guilty, and each is being held on a $300,000 bond.
Speaking to the Associated Press, Elizabeth's attorney, Thomas Stolly, said she was "crying and exhausted" when he met with her in jail on Thursday.
Rather than asking about the charges against her or when she might be released, Stolly said her first concern was for her children.
"In fact, my client's first question to me when I walked into the jail and introduced myself was about her kids. She asked if her children were ok, she asked if I knew where they were, and she asked when she'd be able to see them again," he said. "I thought it was telling that her first concern was not, 'When can I get out of jail,' but was 'Are my children ok?'"
Stolly said he believes the situation is far more complicated, saying that "evil requires malice" and he "did not see any malice in Elizabeth".
"I think that this is more so a case of isolation than a case of evil, and I think that there’s an important distinction there. Because if that’s all you know – and you have to think someone at 15 years old doesn’t know a whole lot about being an adult, about being a mother, about being a wife – and that’s been your worldview for the past 17 or 18 years, you get shaped by that," he continued.
The attorney added that while the mom did not present herself as a victim, "it may be too early to actually determine what was going on there".
"While the headlines may be sensational, there's a real human component to this and so I would ask people to give this process time to play out," he said.
He also confirmed that Elizabeth told him all 16 children are hers and that she married Gary Siders Jr. when she was just 15 years old, per The Tab.
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Officials only found the children after deputies arrived at the property to serve Gary with an unrelated indecent exposure warrant.
Instead, investigators say they found them allegedly living in deplorable conditions after years of isolation.
Per court records, the children are aged 18, 16, 15, 14, 13, 11, 10, 8, 6, 5, four-year-old twins, two-year-old twins, and one-year-old twins.
Investigators believe they had been living in the conditions for at least four years and say none of the children had ever been enrolled in school.
"One of the investigative challenges is that [the children] are limited. They can communicate, but it's extremely limited, and some not at all," Vinton County Sheriff Ryan Cain said during a news conference.
Seven of the children were taken to hospitals in the Columbus area following the rescue, while two were airlifted to Level I trauma centers by helicopter. One child was reported to be in critical condition.
If the four defendants are convicted on all charges, each could face a maximum sentence of up to 192 years in prison.
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