BUCYRUS, OH — A 13-year-old Crestline, Ohio, boy weighed only 65 pounds when he escaped his family home and was “emaciated to the point of having been terrorized,” a county prosecutor said Tuesday while announcing felony kidnapping, assault, child endangerment and other charges against his parents, John P. and Katrina Miller, of Crestline.
The boy had been fed a strict vegan diet that consisted of only almonds, bananas and grapes and is “going to be hospitalized for quite some time,” Crawford County Prosecutor Matt Crall said.
The boy was given only 30 minutes to eat his meals, and the Millers used surveillance cameras to make sure he didn’t eat anything else, Crall said.
The pictures admitted into evidence when the Millers were arraigned Monday in Crawford County Common Pleas court show the effects of long-term starvation. The teen’s hips measured only about 6 inches from one side to the other, and his arms and legs were only about 2 to 3 inches in diameter, the judge overseeing the case noted.
Crall said the damage done to the child justifies the felony charges, including kidnapping.
“Normally, you don’t think of kidnapping as involving someone’s own child,” Crall said, according to an account by the Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum. “But when you knowingly restrain the liberty of another person for the purpose of terrorizing or to inflict serious physical harm — that’s what happened in this situation.”
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How Homeschool Laws Can Shield Abusive Parents
The boy was homeschooled, Crall said.
Under the Ohio homeschool law, his parents were required to notify the school district superintendent of their intent to teach their son at home, use a qualified teacher and provide a brief curriculum outline. Academic assessments are required, but as long as parents file their paperwork on time, no one ever sees these children. Even when academic intervention occurs, it’s handled through a series of filed reports, rather than a visit to the home.
In the hands of the most abusive of parents, homeschooling can be a lethal tool, Rachel Coleman, the co-founder of the Coalition for Responsible Home Education, told Patch for an investigative report last year on homeschool laws across the country. Coleman said that without oversight, homeschooled children are invisible to teachers, school nurses and other adults who might detect abuse, she said.
“Without any oversight, there is nothing to ensure a child is receiving an education or is seen by mandatory reporters,” Coleman said. “Homeschooling parents could lock up a child and no one would ever know.
“It’s really hard to starve a child to death when that kid’s in school,” she said.
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In Ohio, the cases of 35 children who either died or were severely abused while they were homeschooled are detailed on Homeschooling’s Invisible Children. The Coalition for Responsible Home Education, which keeps the database, says its preliminary research suggests that homeschooled children are at a greater risk of dying from child abuse than are traditionally schooled children.
The database is based on national government reports on maltreatment. When the rate of child abuse fatalities among homeschooled families is compared to the rate of child abuse fatalities overall, “we see a higher rate of death due to abuse or neglect among homeschooled students than we do among children of the same age overall,” the organization says on its website.
‘There Are No Words’
The abuse of the Millers’ son might have continued for years if the boy hadn’t managed to escape and run to a house in nearby Galion, about six miles away, and ask for help. The residents called police, Crall said.
Though the boy’s home education kept him out of the sight of mandatory reporters, the family did go to church. Crall said the boy was self-conscious of his emaciated frame, “and he would wear multiple sets of clothing to cover up the fact that he looked the way he did.”
Even so, Crall said it would have been impossible for anyone who saw the boy not to recognize he was being abused.
Crawford County Judge Sean Leuthold said during the Millers’ arraignment the photos entered as evidence in the case clearly show a starving child, Crawford County Now reported.
“These photos are shocking,” Leuthold said. “Looking at this child I cannot even tell the sex of the child due to emaciation. I can see the shoulder blades, the vertebrae, and every rib in the body. His arms are probably 2-3 inches around. His eyes are sunken. This young man looks extremely ill. I’ve never seen pictures like this that don’t involve an atrocity. His legs are maybe 3 inches around and hips maybe 6 inches. There are no words, this looks like a child who is clearly starving.”
The boy’s biological mother no longer has custody and Katrina Miller adopted him after she and John P. Miller were married, Crall said. In an interview, she claimed she had consulted an out-of-state doctor she found on the internet who placed him on a “naturalist” diet, Crall said, adding the boy had suffered leukemia or some other childhood cancer but had not seen a doctor for some time.
A 3-year-old child also living in the home was removed by child protective services worker.s She also suffered from malnourishment, though less severely than her brother, who is being slowly re-introduced to food at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, where he’ll likely remain for about a month, Crall said.
The boy is undergoing treatment for failure to thrive, severe malnutrition and refeeding syndrome — “when the body rejects food just because it’s a foreign substance at that point,” the prosecutor said.
Flourishing children score a 20 on hospital assessment. This boy tested at .1, Crall said.
‘Skinny As A Rail’
In an interview with WBNS-TV reporter Glenn McEntyre, Katrina Miller’s father, Ted Stamper, said she is a “good mother” who loved her children, but was afraid to take the boy to the doctor out of fear she would lose custody.
Stamper disputed allegations his daughter was starving the boy.
“That’s not true,” Stamper said. “They told him to eat and he had things to eat, but he just refused. And then when he would eat, he’d go in the bathroom and throw it back up. So what are you gonna do?”
He said he knew the boy was losing weight and was “skinny as a rail,” but believed his daughter and son-in-law when they said the boy was making himself sick. Stamper said he “didn’t have any concerns for his safety.”
The Millers were indicted by a Crawford County grand jury. Each faces charges of one count of first-degree kidnapping, a felony; one count of felonious assault, a second-degree felony; two felony counts of child-endangerment (second- and third-degree); and one first-degree misdemeanor ocunt of child endangerment.
The charges carry a prison term of 22 years and six months. John Miller could get another six months in prison if he is convicted of a first-degree misdemeanor count of domestic violence, which Crall said stems from an “assault on the child when he wouldn’t eat the way they told him to eat.
The Millers are being held in the Crawford County Justice Center on $500,000 bond each.