Ohio couple admits putting kids in plastic boxes
STEUBENVILLE, Ohio (AP) - An eastern Ohio couple pleaded guilty to punishing their three children by forcing them into plastic storage boxes sealed with duct tape and only a square cut in the top for air.
A prosecutor said the children, ages 5, 6 and 8, were crammed into the boxes as punishment June 16 at the family home in Steubenville while the parents went to the grocery store and left two uncles at home with them. A friend of the family arrived at the house, got the children out of the boxes and contacted police.
Their father, James Taylor, pleaded guilty Tuesday to two counts of child endangerment and one count of unlawful restraint. The plea deal calls for a year in jail. His wife, Samantha Taylor, the children's stepmother, pleaded guilty to the same charges and likely will serve two years of probation.
The clerk's office said a sentencing date for the pair has not been set.
The two uncles pleaded guilty to unlawful restraint and were sentenced to a year of probation. Prosecutors said they helped put the children in the boxes, with one of them cutting the air holes.
Authorities said the children were in the boxes for about 15 to 30 minutes, with square holes cut out of the lids to expose the top part of their faces. There was no indication they had been put in the boxes before, but Jefferson County prosecutor Jeffrey J. Bruzzese said it was part of a cycle of abuse by the parents that included having weights dropped on their feet.
Bruzzese said it was apparent that water was dumped on top of the children while they were restrained in the totes. All the punishment was meted out at James Taylor's direction, the prosecutor said.
Bruzzese told WTOV-TV that the children are now living with relatives and doing well. He did not return a call to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Steubenville is on the Ohio-West Virginia border, about 150 miles east of Columbus.
A prosecutor said the children, ages 5, 6 and 8, were crammed into the boxes as punishment June 16 at the family home in Steubenville while the parents went to the grocery store and left two uncles at home with them. A friend of the family arrived at the house, got the children out of the boxes and contacted police.
Their father, James Taylor, pleaded guilty Tuesday to two counts of child endangerment and one count of unlawful restraint. The plea deal calls for a year in jail. His wife, Samantha Taylor, the children's stepmother, pleaded guilty to the same charges and likely will serve two years of probation.
The clerk's office said a sentencing date for the pair has not been set.
The two uncles pleaded guilty to unlawful restraint and were sentenced to a year of probation. Prosecutors said they helped put the children in the boxes, with one of them cutting the air holes.
Authorities said the children were in the boxes for about 15 to 30 minutes, with square holes cut out of the lids to expose the top part of their faces. There was no indication they had been put in the boxes before, but Jefferson County prosecutor Jeffrey J. Bruzzese said it was part of a cycle of abuse by the parents that included having weights dropped on their feet.
Bruzzese said it was apparent that water was dumped on top of the children while they were restrained in the totes. All the punishment was meted out at James Taylor's direction, the prosecutor said.
Bruzzese told WTOV-TV that the children are now living with relatives and doing well. He did not return a call to The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Steubenville is on the Ohio-West Virginia border, about 150 miles east of Columbus.
 Putting them in bins is bad, but dumping water on them while they are in the bins, that's torture.Â
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The whole town may possibly be nuts.....
I'd like to know what ever happened to spanking? Not full out get-your-butt-beat type spanking but if you did something wrong you knew you were going to get a few swats. Not that I ever had to worry about that... I was a little angel. My brother on the other hand... different story!
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Luckily, my son (12 years old) has been a pretty spectacular kid. Grounding him is enough of a punishment but there were a couple instances when I did give him a couple swats with a spoon and it served its purpose. Now, my 2 year old little princess... I'm going to have my hands full with her! She's a sassy little pisser.
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But no matter what, no kid deserves to be stuffed in a small enclosed space as a punishment. I would NEVER consider punishing my kids like that. Time outs, yes. Grounding, yes. Even the occasional spanking, yes. Stuffed in a box, no. Hopefully those kids haven't suffered too much emotional damage and can grow up to be productive, healthy, and happy people.
i think folks who abuse animals may be more severly punished. it is unclear to me why there is no much media outrage at animal abuse and merely a "story" on child abuse. the outrage only seems to come from the readers. perhaps our journalists have been desensitized to child violence.Â
@jennieb Nah...some other guy in Oregon just tried to roast a Chihuahua at 350 and he can only be sentenced to 60 days by law...still, a big loser in life.
How about we put these scumbags in their own little boxes?
WTF!!! I can think of extremely few reasons I would put my kids into something like that, and that would be if hiding them is for survival and I don't believe such a situation would ever happen. So therefore, there is NO reason for this!!Â
Meaning like in the Ann Frank Diary..... Just to clarify
 @PhunkyMunky My first thought when I read "hiding them is for survival" was The Diary of Anne Frank, even before you clarified what you meant.
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Fortunately for these poor kids, their father apparently didn't play football for Big Red in his high school years and doesn't coach the team now.Â
Like just about everything, kids are easier to stack in plastic bins. With kids, you get them 3 or high and they start to tip over, what with the wiggling and giggling. In bins, kids can wiggle and you can get them 5-6 high. Duh!
 @Bob Owen What about that As Seen on TV ⢠gadget, where you stuff them in bags and it sucks all of the air out so your sweaters and blankets and stuff take up about 75 percent less space than with normal storage methods?Â
 @MargeGunderson  @Bob Owen Stop! Please! ROTFLMAO
"The children are now living with relatives and doing well", that statment begs the question with which relatives are they living? Dad, two uncles, and step-mom did this to begin with. I hope these other releatives are better than the first set.
This is not an adequate amount of space for a bin. Â This should have been a larger high quality tote with proper ventilation and insulation for comfort if you're going to use it to facilitate a child (if all other rooms are full and in need of a small room in a pinch).
@AdAckbar
Funny man, are you here all week? Making light of this is really reprehensible, any form of child abuse (and sticking a child in a box with a duct-taped lid qualifies) is unjustifiable. Â Goodness only knows what else these children may have been subjected to by this family.
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I believe in discipline of your child, this is not discipline. Maybe you could lend your brand of humor over on the couple dead in their sunken car story, Iâm sure you got some real knew slappers for that one.
And its children who are abused by people like these that grow up to commit heinous acts on unsuspecting public.
I had a co-worker one time who told me that their  own mother forced the them when they were kids to stand barefooted on old rusty cans that had been opened with the old-fashioned can openers that left all those jagged metal edges.  :(   People like that and this shouldn't be allowed to keep their children.  And then they should be hung by the neck until they are dead.
The worst my kids got was sitting on a chair in a corner. Usually it was for 5 minutes but they usually cried for 15 minutes before they realized that they exceeded their time.
It's good that one of the uncles cut air holes. I don't think the dad thought that out.
And we should not have licenses for people to breed because.... ?
@Freespeech Why should we stop there, these two should be required to hold a license to exist.
Whatever happened to making them stand with their nose in a corner?
Omg, how do you even come up with that idea? And let me guess; they went to the store for smokes and beer. Trash. All of them.
Frightening that the 2 parents and 2 uncles could not determine that this was unacceptable. Shudder.
 @Melissa Angevine Crackheads? Meth?
 @Melissa Angevine That's what scares me about them being in the care of relatives for their so-called protection right now.
Hopefully someone in that family has a shred of decency, and that's the one who has custody.Â
Hard to keep ones temper when you hear of stuff like this. Idiots. Complete friggin idiots.
 @SeattleJoe No, idiots would know better than to do something like this.
if i put my brats in that they'd just think it was some kind of a toy...
 @bartle_doo Mine puts himself in them and asks me to put on the lid.  He thinks they are forts.
@bartle_doo I've put my son and my daughter in one a few times, of course there was no lid and they were about half full of water- I used it as a bathtub when we would go camping. I would never think to use a storage bin as a punishment other than as a place to store the toys I take away when I have to pick them up. I agree with a few who said there should be a license to have kids.
 @MomOf2  @bartle_doo Agreed! When our kids wouldn't pick up after themselves, their stuff went in the bins until they either bought it out (with 25 cents of actual work for a much needed item) or they earned it back by keeping what's not in the bins picked up!
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I wouldn't even put my small dog in a bin with a lid on it!
 @bartle_doo I buy toys and my kids play with the boxes. I don't get it.
Seems reasonable. So we need a license to operate a car, carry a gun...but just an ability to put peg a into hole b to become a "parent". Sad to see some of the things that happen to the innocent in our world.