Parents Explain Why They Kept Adopted Special-Needs Kids in Cages

Michael and Sharen Gravelle made national headlines last month when officials removed from their home 11 special-needs adopted children, ages 1 through 14, who had been confined to cages in the house. Now the father of the children says that he is tired of the media portraying his wife as the "world’s most evil mother." To prove that they did nothing wrong in their treatment of the children, the Gravelles took a reporter and photographer for the Plain Dealer through their home to show them the rooms—and the cages—where the children had been living.

The Gravelles say they confined the children only to keep them safe. "I felt terrible about it," Michael Gravelle said, "But it’s necessary." The couple says that they adopted children nobody else wanted because of their extremely serious ailments. Problems ranged from fetal alcoholism, autism, and HIV to an eating disorder that causes children to eat dirt and rocks. So, according to the Gravelles, the children were enclosed in homemade wooden structures that would keep them from hurting themselves with glass, damaging the house, or eating medicines. The cabinets and shelves all over the house were all covered with chicken wire. The cages where the children slept are about 6 feet long, with easy-to-open doors. Although the doors had no locks on them, a battery-powered alarm would go off whenever a door was opened.

The Gravelles showed the reporter spots where the children had kicked holes and gouged notches in the drywall, as well as marks where the children had smeared feces. Showing the reporter the urine-soaked baseboards, Sharen Gravelle cried as she said, "We live with this smell. We love these children." Her husband added, "There is nothing easy about raising these children. We did not abuse them. That’s the truth."

Their lawyer says that the youngsters have been placed in foster homes while the adoptions are being investigated, but their foster parents are unequipped to take care of them because of their special needs. Attorney David Sherman says a set of twins had to be separated because the foster parents couldn’t handle them, and one child shaved patches of his head with a razor blade he found. He said in a statement that the caged enclosures, where the children were punished during the day and slept at night, "were approved by licensed social workers." He added that the children were not caged, but kept in enclosures built around bunk beds to keep them from setting fires, eating batteries, and cutting themselves.

Prosecutor Russ Leffler believes without a doubt that the Gravelles adopted the children purely for financial gain, because they received over $4,000 monthly in subsidies and disability payments in 2001, and they had only eight children at that time. In March 2001, Sharen Gravelle told a counselor that she wanted sole custody of those children due to her husband’s "physical mistreatment" of them, saying that he was guilty of "extreme cruelty and gross neglect of duty." She requested a separation, and Michael Gravelle agreed that they were incompatible, but he denied that he had been cruel or neglectful of his children. The couple reconciled three months later and eventually adopted three more children, apparently without the adoption agencies ever reviewing the court papers Sharen Gravelle filed when asking for sole custody.

The biological children of Michael Gravelle have told the media that the accusations against their father don’t surprise them, because they don’t exactly have fond memories of their father being very loving. Jenna and Jesse Gravelle say that when they were teenagers their father forced them to pay rent and find their own food, and Jenna says that her father sexually abused her. Attorney Sherman says Jenna invented those claims because she was upset that her father had remarried.

The state is investigating how the children were placed with the Gravelles in the first place, and whether Huron County responded appropriately once the cages were discovered. It is not known whether the Gravelles made any changes to the enclosures before showing them to the newspaper reporters, but Michael Gravelle told the newspaper, "If you can call these cages, take me to jail right now." Given the fact that thousands of loving parents in America care for special needs children without building wooden enclosures for them, it’s surprising that the state hasn’t already taken him up on that offer.