We have a mom that could have been front page news herself
with this headline alleging
mom locks young children out of house in cold.
Now, her name is Sonya,
and this is what her children have to say about Sonya
and about the way she mothered,
or at least what she called mothering.
Take a look.
I don't think my mom was ever fit to be a parent.
Most of the time we didn't have hot water,
so everybody was taking cold showers.
The living conditions in the house were disgusting.
There were cockroaches.
The walls were buckling, and the floors were crooked.
Because she was neglectful,
I had to take care of my brother and sister.
It was me getting them up for school, making breakfast,
getting them to their bus stop,
and then my mom would just disappear into her bedroom.
The very night I turned 18, I was gone.
But my brother and sister were still in the house.
There were plenty of times when we did not have food.
My mom and her boyfriend would take food
and hide it in their room.
So I started sneaking food into the house.
The last straw is when she locked
my brother and sister out of the house and then left.
We attempted to go into the front door, and it was locked.
Sonya's boyfriend and his kids told us
that we were not allowed to go into the house.
It was cold outside.
We didn't have the things that we needed.
For months at a time,
Chance and I would stay place to place.
I carried around a duffle bag full of clothes
and I would stay wherever I could find a place.
In school people would tell me
that I was the girl that smelled funny,
because I always had my duffle bag full of clothes.
I absolutely loathe my mother.
I do not call Sonya mom.
A mother figure is somebody that loves you,
and Sonya has not done that.
I feel like she stole my childhood.
So tell me, you guys are here for what reason today,
because I need to tell you what my thinking is,
so I need to know what yours is first.
My reasoning for coming here, was to get closure,
and get some answers about some things
that had happened in the past.
Why she did what she did,
and didn't do what she didn't do?
Exactly.
OK, how 'bout you, Nova?
Absolutely the same thing.
I think it's very important to get clarity,
because we all know our side,
but we don't know what her thought process was,
or what she had thought was OK,
compared to what we did. But you're not at all fuzzy
about what she did or didn't do, right?
No, absolutely not.
Now according to Dustin, Chance and Nova,
their mother partied with strangers in the house,
had Dustin care for his siblings,
and we're talking when he's a teenage.
Now you say she disappeared for one to two months at a time?
Yes.
She told me one day that she had to go to jail
for something that she did.
And then I guess the story
that she told my brother and sister was that
she had to have some kind of operation.
But she was gone and I didn't question anything about it.
I went to live with my aunt
who was in her late 80s, early 90s at the time.
And you're how old?
I was probably 16.
So you think she's in jail,
you all think she's having an operation?
Yeah. Yup.
For two months?
Yup.
That's a big operation.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
She met someone online and wanted to go visit him.
And--
So she took off with a guy?
To Washington.
OK, now we talked about locking you guys out of the house.
What happened?
She's in the house.
She was in the house.
So Chance and I had come home from our father's house
and had recently had a conversation with her
about how we felt as though we were better off
living with our father.
So when we had come home to go back into the house,
we were locked out,
and we were told Sonya said you're not welcome in the home.
OK, and you were 13, 14 at the time,
right? Yup.
OK, and we're talkin' winter, in Ohio, right?
Yes.
So it's cold.
It was cold. Oh yeah.
What did you think when you come home
and you're locked out of your house?
It was initially a huge shock
because all you could think is you know,
what did we do in order for her not want us in our home.
Now when you got inside the home,
what was it like inside the home?
Because I understand the conditions were not pristine.
The conditions of the house, I mean,
you would walk up on the porch
and you could see roaches running across the porch.
You open up the refrigerator,
there were roaches in the refrigerator.
I don't believe the stove worked,
'cause it was full of bugs.
What would you do for food?
We just waited until we got to school and ate there.
School or friends' houses.
And we spent a lot of time with friends.
There was times where my friends' parents
would go to the grocery store
and bring us food to the house,
because they knew we just didn't have any.