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A SPECIAL SECTION:  Haiti, Since the January 12, 2010 Earthquake
                                                         
Posted December 7, 2010
                                       
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Officials Struggle to Unravel Tale of 5 Children Being Raised in Secrecy
                                  
bandit parents

YORK COUNTY PRISON, VIA YORK DISPATCH, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Sinhue Johnson and Louann E. Bowers face child welfare charges.

 

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
 
YORK, Pa. - Louann E. Bowers ran away from home when she was 16. Now 33, she spent most of the intervening years in hiding. She raised five children in secrecy, living so far off the grid that her parents had her declared dead.

Those children, who range in age from 2 to 13, have no birth certificates, the police say, and they never went to school or got vaccines. The family lived in squalor for perhaps as long as 13 years, most of the time without electricity or running water or even a toilet.

Ms. Bowers gave birth again last week, 15 weeks prematurely. But this baby was born in a known location: in Ms. Bowers's cellblock in the York County Prison.

Ms. Bowers and Sinhue Johnson, who is in his mid-40s and is the father of the children, are in prison on charges of endangering the children's welfare. A legal conference is expected in February or March, when the case could either be settled or sent to trial.
 
bad house

BILL KALINA/YORK DISPATCH, VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
The police say a couple raise five children in squalor and out of public view for years in one room of this room in York, Pa.
                                                  
The story of these hidden lives has shocked many in this south-central Pennsylvania manufacturing town, where the colonial architecture reflects its Revolutionary War past. The city is prosperous in some areas, but it can be rough around the edges; 23 percent of residents live below the poverty line.

"Who would even think that this could happen?" asked David Robinson, 51, a handyman who works regularly on the block of modest row houses where the police say the couple kept the children for years in one room of a house at 734 South Duke Street that is now condemned. "No way anybody, especially with kids, could have lived here."

Christopher Reilly, a county commissioner, called the case "a tragedy" and said the children "were not socialized in an appropriate fashion." Mr. Reilly said it was bizarre that a family of seven "could essentially live underground" in a small urban setting.

Ms. Bowers's defense lawyer, Ronald J. Gross, said his client had been "neglectful" and had "made mistakes," but she is seeking to regain custody of her children.

The question, Mr. Gross said in an interview in his law office here, is whether her behavior was "a gross deviation from what is acceptable."

"We believe she was pretty darn close to that line," he said, but that she did not cross it.

While acknowledging his client's shortcomings, Mr. Gross sought to paint a picture of quaint home life. "There has been no enrollment in schools," he said. "It's been schooling as you would see in 'Little House on the Prairie,' where they're sitting in the house and learning and being educated."

The police give a far different version, saying there were no records showing that the children had been educated or registered for home schooling, as state law requires. Detective Dana C. Ward Jr. of the York City Police Department, who has been investigating the case for more than a year, said the children were developmentally delayed and had vision problems and possible mental health problems.

The children are in foster care. The baby remains in the intensive-care unit of the hospital where she and Ms. Bowers were rushed after the unexpected jailhouse birth. The baby is likely to stay hospitalized for months, and then perhaps go into foster care.

Mr. Gross said the children did have birth certificates, but he would not say where they were born.

Court filings and interviews here provide a bare bones and often conflicting portrait of Ms. Bowers's life over the last 17 years. Piecing together the story has been hampered for the defense and the prosecution because Ms. Bowers and Mr. Johnson have been uncooperative and have instructed their children not to discuss their lives with anyone.

Ms. Bowers ran away from her home in East Berlin, a small town just west of here, on June 8, 1993, at age 16, possibly because she had become involved romantically with Mr. Johnson, who was her uncle by marriage.

Mr. Gross said Ms. Bowers did not become involved with Mr. Johnson until she was 18, when she was no longer a minor. It is not clear if they are married. Mr. Johnson is being represented by a public defender, who did not return repeated calls for comment.

Ms. Bowers lived in Baltimore until she was 18, Mr. Gross said, but he does not know if she worked or how she survived. Then she joined up with Mr. Johnson, apparently in York.

Mr. Gross said they lived not on Duke Street, as the police say, but with Mr. Johnson's relatives elsewhere in York, though in one room. Mr. Johnson held odd jobs like collecting scrap, Mr. Gross, said, and Ms. Bowers wore a veil, which attracted attention.

"She was seen around York; she was described as 'the crazy lady,'" he said. "She had her face covered, glasses, always had the walkie-talkie on hand and was almost like the town nut, if you will."

Mr. Gross said that at one point, the boyfriend of a relative of Mr. Johnson had threatened violence against Ms. Bowers and the children and they moved to a protective shelter in Washington, D.C., for seven years.

"It was a strange situation," Mr. Gross said. "She can't just call the police because she'll be found." Asked why Ms. Bowers did not want to be found, Mr. Gross said, "That's what we're trying to figure out."

Meanwhile, back in East Berlin, another drama was unfolding. In 2003, Ms. Bowers's grandmother died, according to The York Daily Record, leaving to Ms. Bowers a share of the family's $830,000 property. After searching unsuccessfully for Ms. Bowers, the family had her declared legally dead in 2004. When the grandmother's estate was settled in 2008, the newspaper said, Ms. Bowers's share of the inheritance, which was worth more than $100,000, was divided up. About $50,000 went to her mother and about $16,600 to each of her three siblings. All signed releases agreeing to return the money if it had been wrongly distributed.

A woman who answered the phone at Ms. Bowers's mother's house last week declined to be interviewed. Other relatives could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Gross said he represented Ms. Bowers only on the criminal charges and could not comment on whether she might seek to claim her inheritance. It could become relevant to her case if she wants to establish that she has some way of supporting her children when she gets out of prison.

It is not clear whether county officials did all they could to intervene.

In 2003 and 2007, York County Children and Youth Services received anonymous tips that Ms. Bowers and Mr. Johnson were harboring several children at Duke Street. But the police said officials were unable to investigate fully because Mr. Johnson had been uncooperative and they had no record of the children.

Mr. Reilly, the county commissioner, said the commissioners had determined that the child services agency had "done nothing wrong."

"Our director said people in the agency were personally aware of the situation for many years but they couldn't actually get them when they were there or apprehend the parents," he said, attributing the lack of intervention to "a combination of bad luck and unfortunate timing."

A spokesman for the state's Department of Public Welfare said, "Nothing has been presented to us to indicate any failure by the county to do its job." In 2009, officials received another tip, and that August they found the family at a motel and took the children into custody.

Ms. Bowers and Mr. Johnson were not arrested then but were picked up in July of this year on unrelated weapons charges. In September, Detective Ward recommended that they be charged with endangering the children's welfare.

Ms. Bowers has since been taking parenting courses in prison and studying for her general-equivalency diploma, although the baby's birth derailed her plans to take the exam this month.

Reuniting the family is not necessarily plausible. "I don't know how that would benefit the children," Mr. Reilly said.

Ms. Bowers's lawyer, however, said she would "jump through hoops" to get her children back.

"Getting her GED means she's employable, have her Social Security number run and not be worried that she'll come up a missing person," Mr. Gross said. "She can get out, make money, pay rent, take care of business. It's going to be really different for her. I'm not even sure she's ready for it yet, but I guess time will tell."

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company. Reprinted from The New York Times, National, of Tuesday, December 7, 2010.
                                                                 
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