Two parents are behind bars after they abused and traumatized their 5 adopted children, treating them “worse than prisoners of war in their own home,” prosecutors say.
An Ohio grand jury this week indicted the children’s father, 63-year-old Charles Edmonson, and mother, 49-year-old Matthew Edmonson, on five counts of child endangering. The parents face up to 18 years in prison if convicted. Three kids are triplets who will turn 9 next week, while the others are 12 and 14. According to Clermont County Prosecuting Attorney Mark J. Tekulve, the Edmonsons originally took on the 5 special-needs siblings as foster children and then went on to adopt them.
But hopes of having a stable, loving family never came to fruition, prosecutors say. The kids reportedly were in and out of the hospital for injuries such as bruising, beach burns and potential internal bleeding. Their mother would allegedly play down the injuries to doctors as typical for special needs kids. The break in the case came when cops arrested Charles Edmonson for sexually abusing a different adopted son who was an adult at the time. Detectives recovered numerous videos that were “too graphic to describe” and showed the defendants were “treating these beloved special needs children worse than prisoners of war in their own home,” Tekulve said.
Charles, right inset, and Matthew Edmonson, left inset, are accused of forcing their children to strip naked as a punishment at their home in Clermont County, Ohio. (Mug shots: Clermont County Sheriff’s Office; Screengrab: Crime Fix)
“The videos of these undernourished and naked children huddled up in a locked room in the basement, on the stone-cold basement floor like a pile of puppies trying to stay together to keep warm, are nothing short of gut-wrenching,” Tekulve said in a statement. “These two are unfit to be parents and I am grateful to those who have worked tirelessly to make sure they will not be. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time and will not be the last time that my office has had to seek indictment for people like this who pretend to be ‘parents.””
Tekulve told Crime Fix with Angenette Levy that sometimes there would be a mattress on the basement floor, but often not. The so-called parents would monitor the kids via a video surveillance system in the basement and would be stripped naked as a punishment, according to the prosecutor.
“These three little fellows, the triplets, they were just wrapped up with one another naked,” he told Levy. “And you can imagine why they’re doing this. It is for warmth, and probably for comfort as well. But we intend to prosecute this case and seek the maximum possible penalty.”
Tekulve said Child Protective Services removed the children from the Edmonson home a few months ago.
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