Siders 16 Kids: Wait Until You See THIS!

[00:00:01]This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Bruski and Robin Green.

[00:00:08]>> The Cider family got caught because of a random misdemeanor warrant warrant because uh dad uh couldn't keep his pants on around the neighbors allegedly.

[00:00:16]That's it. That's the entire safety net that worked. The store employees noticed the neighbors were feet away. Nobody called. And here's the uncomfortable premise. Um, psychotherapist Siobhan Scott is here to walk us through this case is not rare. Families like this exist in every state, every county, seen and unseen at the same time. This next part here is about the psychology of everyone on the outside. Why we notice and do nothing and how many of these houses we've walked past. Is it really that though? Is it really that we we we say we we do nothing or is it more so societal because we know if we say something we see something we say something nothing happens.

[00:00:59]>> Uh that that seems to be more of what it is. And and then why why expose ourselves? Why waste the time? Why do this when you report it and it goes uh absolutely uh nowhere? Um a lot of uh attention being brought on the people who saw him at the Dollar General or here or there.

[00:01:19]I mean, does does does the pe do the people who who saw these folks and and smelled them and felt the despair and and saw those kids? And when I see kids like this at the store, I mean, it's it's heartbreaking. And my immediate reaction is they're effed. They are completely effed if these are the parents that they have. But I know there's absolutely nothing I can do by walking past them at the Dollar General or the Walmart or wherever that will help these kids or save these kids from the absolute [ __ ] horrible decision-making, mutant parents that they have. uh that that's that seems to be the reality that we live in is we like to to to pretend we're saying something and seeing something and doing something, but the doing something is the part that never really goes on or if it does it's very half-assed and then the system is designed to put the kids back with abusers. Um that seems to be our problem here. We we we have no place to put them. So the convenient thing is well let's just try and hope to God mom and dad change their ways and they never do and it's just cycle and it just goes on and on and on and on.

[00:02:27]>> You know the the person I'd like to have a conversation with is the obstitrician.

[00:02:33]She gave birth in the hospital. First thing when I heard the story I thought she must have had all these babies at home but no she gave birth in the hospital. And if you're an obstitrician and you have a young woman in her 20s, early 30s, and you're saying, "How many births have you had?" You know, this is your 13th, your 14th, your 15th. Don't you ask some questions at that point?

[00:02:56]You know, this is so far out of the normal hum of human behavior. and and I guess that this is a hospital that was too small to have a a funded social work position, you know, but isn't this a family where where even at that level, at the medical level, people would have been alarmed and and been looking at this closely and asking questions and it doesn't seem like that happened.

[00:03:20]>> But is there I guess my question to you is there anything that they could have done? I mean, I I I I would have to guess that after all these births in this hospital that that people, you know, on the side are like, "Oh my god, she's back again." And and there's there's chatter amongst like, "Oh, this is, you know," and there's chatter, but is is there truly anything that that they could have have done? I I don't know the answer to that. I like to think in a functional public health system which >> in a functional public health >> in a functional public health system.

[00:03:56]Yes.

[00:03:56]>> Um and I have the word functional >> right I have seen this happen at some times if there's a family where there are questions where there are concerns.

[00:04:05]Um you don't even necessarily need to open a CPS file but you can make a request that a public health nurse go out to the home and check on the family.

[00:04:14]You know how is mom doing postpartum?

[00:04:17]And I I think, you know, when we're looking at systemic changes, why doesn't that happen with every birth where there's just a follow-up visit from a public health nurse a few months down weeks or months down the road, how is everybody doing? You know, you would catch postpartum depression that way.

[00:04:33]You could catch people who are, you know, inadequately nourished. Um, you could certainly catch these hoarding households. Um, but I think a visit, a home visit would not >> I I hope to bring a little more to the conversation. I haven't had a chance to talk to my daughter yet who is a labor and delivery nurse and so she sees I she is so insightful on this kind of stuff and I I'm I just haven't had a chance to talk to her. She's been working non-stop since this broke. Um, so I plan on asking her about what what would she do in this situation? What do her colleagues do? Because I know they are so attentive to people like this. Um, I've just heard stories. Um, and I just know her. I know I know her colleagues.

[00:05:13]They are so I've never seen more passionate people about what they do in the world. Um, so it's a good question.

[00:05:18]>> Well, I mean, it's one thing to catch these things and I I I don't even feel like these things weren't caught. I I this is out in the open. I mean, these people caught these things. It's just there's nothing that happens when they are caught. I mean, there's there's it's like what do you do? Okay, we've determined there's a house with 16 children. WHO WANTS TO ADOPT the kids that can't speak? that that are, you know, feral. Like, what do you do with it? What do you do with these poor souls that are are the the victims of their circumstance? I mean, we we we don't seem to have a very good plan in place for any of that. We have a lot of talk of we're going to catch this, we're going to do that, but then it's like, okay, now what uh what do we do next?

[00:06:03]And and that's where we seem to be stuck. Why are we stuck there, Siobhan?

[00:06:07]Why are we so stuck there as a society where it's like here's how our system is broken? Here's where we we we bring the the these problems on a silver platter to the attention of the of society. And it's like we got no real way to deal with this. And we never seem to like legislate anything or do anything to fix this massive problem in our society which is then systemic of all of the other problems that end up coming into our society when we end up people end up becoming adults and they can't function.

[00:06:42]>> Yeah. And that's I think a place where you and I often get to. It's like hey we're great at identifying the problems.

[00:06:50]What the hell do you do about it? Yeah.

[00:06:52]and and we run into it. Um I live in Portland, Oregon, and we've got a big, as most major urban areas do, we've got a big problem with unhoused folks, mentally ill folks, addicted to drug folks, and a a lot of pregnant, unhoused, mentally ill, addicted folks who are living, you know, under the bridge. Yeah.

[00:07:11]>> And everybody throws their hands up.

[00:07:13]What can we do? What can we do? And we go around and around and around with trying to come up with solutions and trying to get people into treatment, but they don't want treatment. And I I think we have a country built on the concept of freedom, right?

[00:07:29]>> And we take that to an extreme degree that people are free to eat out of trash cans if they want to. Are they free to feed their children out of trash cans if they want to? Are they free to raise children and live under a bridge somewhere? And I think that's where a lot of this gets um this gets stuck is that we don't want you know you'll hear so many times political speeches we don't want the government we don't want the government controlling us we don't want the government monitoring us that's that's a communist system or whatever you know it's like this idea of freedom well there are people that can't manage life and they should not be bringing kids into unsafe awful situations and I think it's something is it unique ally American. I don't know. We may struggle with it more than other countries do because we have such an emphasis on personal freedom here.

[00:08:22]>> Do we need to revisit I mean there there are obviously you know group homes and and essentially orphanages and things of that nature that exists in the world and and we think back to many many old days where uh in state hospitals and things of that nature that were not run well.

[00:08:41]And I know we've had this conversation a thousand times too, but for the sake of the story, we should touch it again. Um, >> do we need to revisit some of these things on a massive scale again? um where we do have massive campuses that that exist for state hospital care for people who truly need it or for children who are in homes like this where it's it's certainly not the the best situation where you got the parents there and it's a lovely family, but the the state hospital home or the the state orphanage home is still better than this.

[00:09:15]I feel like we could do a lot of that real icky back then. It wasn't.

[00:09:24]Yeah. Well, we could do better. We We could totally revisit this stuff. We could create a safer environment. And yes, they're all ripe for abuse. They always have been. They always will be.

[00:09:33]That's why you have oversight and you fix it. We don't just keep going, "Well, it could go wrong this way." Well, guess what? Out in society, it already it's going 10 times worse. So it may not be the best, but it's better than that and we can do this. But we for whatever reason we we always seem to be telling ourselves that we can't >> and then and we have to just stick with the status quo which clearly has not been working out very well. Um, is there any is there anything going on in in this world in our country in in in systems like that to to bring some of those things back or to to rebuild or start from scratch with a a new concept in those veins that would better serve children especially um in these sort of environments. cuz right now it's just shuffle the kids around from one random home to the next in most cases for until those parents go, "Oh [ __ ] I didn't know it was going to be difficult uh raising a child uh with mental health problems because of the [ __ ] holes they came out of and then they get sent to the next home and the next home and then abuse happens along the way and we're just like, "Ah, well, we did our best."

[00:10:45]We we we don't do anything right. We can't seem to figure these problems out even though they're staring us in the face every damn day.

[00:10:52]>> Mhm. And you know, residential treatment, therapeutic residential treatment programs do exist for kids.

[00:11:00]And we have some for mentally ill adults as well. We don't have nearly enough.

[00:11:04]And so you don't need this gigantic big institutional orphanage, but but we do need programs that are smaller that are based in in homes, large homes where you have a team of it's not just a husband and wife, but you have a team of people who rotate in throughout the day and throughout the night, rotating staff who are well trained, educated. You have therapists, you know, that work there as well. Treatment plans for every kid.

[00:11:31]Kids needs are met. So, we do know how to do those things, but the problem is funding those things and and do taxpayers prioritize that we do need to build a better system of re I'll call it residential care, you know, rather than institutionalizing people, >> but where where if you're an adult and you're living out under a bridge and you're rolling in the dirt and screaming because you can't stop using math, um that we can look at that and say, you know, as a society, we need to do better for that person because this is not a person who can make a choice. You know, they're too mentally ill and can we come up with a better living situation for them and enact that? You know, this is called assisted outpatient treatment is happening in some states. Um, it needs to happen more and it needs to be funded more. But where you can say, you know, this idea about personal freedom, this is a a great concept, but some people are clearly not able to manage it and they are having kids and we do need more residential care for folks.

[00:12:39]>> Yeah, I'm sorry. Just I've been distracted trying to do all the research since you're talking about fixes. What popped in my mind is we keep seeing all these overhauls of all these other shiny programs all over the place. And so I was curious, when was the last time there's a real overhaul of any of the programs associated with this? Um, and there's it's the the empty air I'm coming to is pretty interesting. Like they like Ohio overhauled overhaul they updated their homeschooling program, no extra funding.

[00:13:14]Um, family >> like they they downgraded basically in terms >> Yeah. Because I was curious, you know, are we because I I am a root cause guy.

[00:13:23]you know what root cause can prevent, you know, it's like yesterday when we're talking Tony was like, you know, people and politicians and everyone keeps coming up with band-aids, but band-aids don't fix the problem. Band-aids mask it till the na next election. So, it can be a nice slogan for people, but is anyone doing anything? You know, you don't have to like the politics of it, but Rudy Giuliani, way back when I first got to sign New York and in the FBI, first thing he did to overall crime in the city was he got rid of squeegees. you know the squeegee guys because if you take care of the grassroot level it then will spring from there and then crime will go down you know that was the theory and it worked out pretty good and then Bloomberg took it over and then so since then they did the same thing like let's go at the root cause and so yesterday we talked about the root cause what what kind of things instead of band-aids with with all these things after it's already happened very reactively what can we do proactively when they're really small really young like that's why I asked Siobhan about the camp thing you know what kind of new programs at that grassroot level can get in there to prevent all these things happening and I've researched has anything been done in that area?

[00:14:30]>> No. No. You know, so there again, people keep pouring slogans at band-aids, but it's still not fixing these problems.

[00:14:40]>> I want to throw this I mean because I know you said, you know, the the taxpayers need to give a [ __ ] enough to to do anything. Is it that the taxpayers don't care or is it that the legislature doesn't doesn't bring any ideas either and and that they don't want to go there and that there may be other other forces at play here that don't want to be examined that that don't that that are are enjoying the system as is? I mean, who's benefiting from any of this, I guess, would be the question. Who's benefiting from a broken child welfare system? Predators.

[00:15:10]>> Mhm.

[00:15:13]>> Is that our answer? I mean, at the end of the day, this doesn't seem to be that it need I don't know. I don't think any of these fixes are like rocket science.

[00:15:23]We just don't do them.

[00:15:24]>> Um, so so who's who's being incentivized? Who's who's enjoying the system being as broken as it is and basically a clearing house for broken children, predators.

[00:15:36]>> Yeah. And you know, I here's what I think is another problem with it is that, you know, so here we are. We're compassionate, caring people on our show. all our contributors are and we we're critical thinkers but when you look at people that get elected not all of them you know but in general you don't have that kind of because I don't like my years ago people said Robin you ever want to run for politics out of the FBI said what are you nuts no you know but to be a decision maker and that can actually redirect funds and attack you know the core root of things you actually have to be a critical thinker and actually look at cause and effect I mean we have a big employment issue um under staffing and critical jobs. I mean, just think about what one small program of exposing kids to good healthy behaviors at a young age could do for everything in this country or everything in the world. Yet, it doesn't it's not rocket science like we keep saying, but no one has the the the willingness to to just make a shift. And I don't care.

[00:16:39]Both parties, you know, claim this, you know, so just do something. It it is such a small minute fix to just instead of treating the cut with a band-aid, just don't have that little nick hurt that's going to get infected because that's exactly what keeps happening in every single one of these cases. It's just infuriating.

[00:16:58]>> And it t it takes me back this thing about yes, Robin, you should run for office. We would all love that. We vote for you. But but we didn't even have a federal law against child abuse until 1974.

[00:17:12]And so, you know, when we look for solutions from politicians, I mean, I think they need to hear from a lot of people that this matters to us and we we want the welfare of kids to take priority because even if it costs money up front, it's going to save so much.

[00:17:29]Yes.

[00:17:29]>> Down the road. You know, >> that's what's so mindblowing. It's so mind-blowing. I mean, you want to save taxpayer dollars. You want to save money to do big projects. Absolutely. How do you do it? You don't pay for million dollars of band-aids. You just spend a couple hundred thousand or even just a couple hundred, a couple thousand to just create a program here. I mean, you because the net is going to be would be wide. Would you catch everyone in that net? No. But if you I'm just think about if you look at those numbers. We're talking what number did I give out?

[00:18:01]500,000 something like that of of if you just think about the impact if you could create one program with a couple thousand dollars >> that makes a 10% difference that is a 100,000 kids and that's only 10% difference the likelihood of it being greater even more 10 that's a 100,000 kids that just are better off today than they would have been otherwise >> we have to as a society in our country we have to have a society saying, "You know what? Um, not everybody uh deserves to have complete uh autonomy and freedom to do whatever you want. Eat out of the garbage can and then feed your kids out of the garbage can."

[00:18:40]>> And then and then manifesting things like Nick Riner.

[00:18:42]>> Yeah. I mean, you you need we need a society that says, you know what, you're not healthy. You're a danger to yourself and others. And because we're sane and we're we're not idiots, we'd like to help you. We don't want you to to not have any autonomy here forever, but we need to help get you there. And the only way to get you there is by stepping in and saying you can't take care of yourself right now. If you see an injured animal on the street or something like that, you want to care for it. We're more caring about an injured dog than we are the people. And and and all in the name of freedom. uh and and people don't seem to understand the difference between you know freedom and and actual uh care compassionate care for other people. It it is not compassionate. It is not caring to to let people live in their own squalor who are incapable of getting out of it. That is the exact opposite >> because compassion is empathy plus action.

[00:19:42]>> That equals compassion. And and I am I I mean I served my country for many many years like my entire life and I'm a big freedom guy. I love our constitution. It gives a lot of freedoms but freedom without compassion. What the hell is the point?

[00:19:54]>> Good point.

[00:19:55]>> Exactly. We'll wrap on that. Your thoughts in the comments section on Substack and YouTube.

[00:20:00]>> Robin Drake running for president.

[00:20:02]>> That's why I saw you never said that speech.

[00:20:05]>> My loving critic as you all know or Kim would have a have a problem with it. I think >> I would too. You can't leave this show even if it serves your country more.

[00:20:16]>> Can you imagine the viewers you'd get?

[00:20:18]>> Hey, hey, >> uh your thoughts comments section. Uh all right. Siobhan's book Nightbird available wherever you get books. Also audio book, please read it multiple times too. You get something every time you read it.

[00:20:32]>> Yeah. Uh her story extremely powerful.

[00:20:34]Uh especially on this topic here too. Uh and Robins, it's not all about me. His latest available wherever you get books uh and audio books. Leave a review on Amazon and go check that out. Until next time, for Robin, for Siobhan, for Todd, I'm Tony Bruski. We'll talk again real soon.

[00:20:50]>> Want more on this case and others? Then press subscribe now and don't miss a moment of true crime coverage from Tony Brussi and the Hidden Killers podcast.