They endured medieval-like circumstances, had been stored in a dungeon, and handled “worse than prisoners of warfare,” prosecutors mentioned of the 5 adopted kids of Charles and Matthew Edmondson.
The Ohio couple was sentenced final Friday after they accepted plea offers on costs together with baby endangerment, felonious assault and kidnapping. Charles Edmondson, 64, will serve a minimal of 15 years in jail; his spouse, Matthew, will spend a minimum of the subsequent 13 years behind bars. Prosecutors moved to dismiss one other 48 counts in opposition to Charles Edmonson and 44 further counts in opposition to Matthew Edmonson as a part of the deal.
“Your honor, I’m right here in entrance of you as a result of I consider God has a objective for me,” Matthew Edmonson mentioned Friday. “I do know it’s taken quite a lot of errors to be right here, and I’m now seeing the larger image. I need to finish the unfavorable cycle. I need my sons to obtain psychological and emotional therapeutic. I’m actually sorry.”
Bailey Edmonson, a organic son of the couple, was additionally sentenced Friday, receiving two years’ probation after pleading responsible to a few misdemeanor counts of kid endangering, based on The Cincinnati Enquirer.
The 5 adopted sons, 4 of which had particular wants, endured a nightmarish existence, usually being disadvantaged of meals and water.
Investigators indicted the couple in June following a separate probe into Charles Edmondson, which discovered him responsible of sexually assaulting one other of his adopted sons, an grownup on the time.
Clermont County prosecuting lawyer Mark J. Tekulve beforehand mentioned investigators discovered extra proof of “extreme psychological and bodily abuse” that led to further indictments in opposition to the Edmondsons.
The 5 boys are organic brothers.
Prosecutors outlined the assorted “punishments” they endured in an August courtroom submitting. They had been usually positioned in a basement room, bare, with nothing however a steel-framed bunk mattress, normally with no mattress or blanket. They’d normally be stored there all night time, clinging to one another for heat.
“The movies of those undernourished and bare kids huddled up in a locked room within the basement, on the stone-cold basement ground like a pile of puppies making an attempt to remain collectively to maintain heat, are nothing wanting gut-wrenching,” Tekulve mentioned in a press release in June.
Pictures from surveillance cameras put in within the house confirmed one of many kids tied to a mattress within the basement. They’d restricted entry to water, and meals was usually denied them as punishment.
The kids usually complained of being hungry; one was discovered scavenging meals out of the trash in school. One other advised college officers that urine and feces had been rubbed into his eyes as a punishment.
“These two are unfit to be dad and mom, and I’m grateful to those that have labored tirelessly to verify they won’t be,” Tekulve mentioned. “Sadly, this isn’t the primary time and won’t be the final time that my workplace has needed to search indictment for individuals like this who faux to be ‘dad and mom.’”
Prosecutors mentioned the boys, 4 of whom have a genetic situation related to mental and developmental issues, had been beneath fixed video surveillance all through the home, based on the Cincinnati Enquirer.
The abuse began when the youngest boys had been about 3 years outdated and continued for greater than 5 years. The brothers had been 13, 11 and 8-year-old triplets when faraway from the Edmondson’s house in February, 5 years after they had been adopted. Prosecutors allege the abuse began the summer time earlier than that, in July 2018, when the couple had been fostering the boys.
Every “would require years if not a lifetime of psychiatric therapy,” prosecutors mentioned in courtroom filings.
