TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — Eleven children forced to sleep in
cages by their adoptive parents reached a $2 million settlement with an
Ohio county where three of them lived before they were placed in the
home outfitted with wire and wood enclosures.
The agreement, which
still needs a judge’s approval, likely will bring a close to the series
of lawsuits and financial settlements that came after the children were
taken out of the home in 2005.
The adopted and foster children
ranged in age from 1 to 14 when authorities removed them from their home
near Norwalk. Their adoptive parents, Michael and Sharen Gravelle,
spent two years in prison for abusing some of the children.
The
Gravelles, who said they used the cages at their northern Ohio home to
protect children they said acted up and were destructive, lost custody
in 2006.
All 11 of the children were placed with foster parents.
The oldest two are in college and have used the money from earlier
settlements to pay for tuition, said Jack Landskroner, an attorney for
the children.
The rest are doing well, Landskroner said, though
some scars remain. The children were wrongly portrayed as troubled
during the trial of the Gravelles, he said.
"These kids were good
kids," Landskroner said. "It’s amazing the positive results you see on
children who are placed in a loving, caring home."
The settlements, he said, will allow them to move forward now.
There
have been seven public and private financial settlements with counties
and agencies that had a role in placing the children in the home and
some of the professionals who were charged with their placement and
overseeing their care.
The latest and final settlement was agreed
upon last week when officials in Stark County, where three siblings
lived before being placed with Gravelles, signed off on the $2 million
payout, Landskroner said.
The county will pay $100,000 while the rest will come from its insurers.
County
officials maintain they did nothing wrong. Stark County had assurances
from another county where the Gravelles lived that they were fit to be
adoptive parents and that the children would be monitored, said Ross
Rhodes, who oversees the civil division of the Stark County prosecutor’s
office.
"With the benefit of hindsight, these children were placed in a very bad situation," Rhodes
said.
Officials
in Huron County, where the Gravelles lived, agreed to a $1.2 million
settlement in 2010. Terms of the other settlements were confidential and
not released.
The investigation into how the children ended up in
the home led the state to increase oversight in cases of multiple
special-needs children in one home.
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