LATEST POLICE FOCUS: NEW REPORT ALLEGES MULTIPLE TEEN MARRIAGES INSIDE OHIO ‘HOUSE OF HORRORS’ FAMILY…

LATEST POLICE FOCUS: NEW REPORT ALLEGES MULTIPLE TEEN MARRIAGES INSIDE OHIO ‘HOUSE OF HORRORS’ FAMILY 💥 SH0CKING DISCOVERY ADDS ANOTHER LAYER TO THE INVESTIGATION

Editor’s Note: This story contains discussions of child abuse that may be disturbing. Reader discretion is advised. If you suspect a child is being abused, find out how to report it in your state here. To connect with a counselor, you can call the National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-422-4253.

(NewsNation) — Marriage and birth records reviewed by The Columbus Dispatch show at least three members of the Siders family wed while still teenagers themselves — including the woman now accused, alongside three relatives, of confining 16 children in filthy conditions inside a Vinton County home.

Elizabeth Russell was just 15 when she wed Gary Siders Jr. in West Virginia in 2008. By May of that year, two months after the wedding, she had given birth to the first of what would become 18 children over the next 17 years.

She isn’t the only young bride in the family.

State records show Tessi Wright was 14 and pregnant when she married Richard E. Siders, then 48, in Gallia County, Ohio, in 2002, per the Dispatch. Tessi Siders later told The New York Times that her late husband was a cousin of Gary Siders Sr.

A year later, in the same county, 15-year-old Virginia Siders married Joshua Saunders, per the Dispatch.

Ohio ‘House of Horrors’: What we know about the case

Gary Siders Sr., his wife Christina, their son Gary Siders Jr., and daughter-in-law Elizabeth have all pleaded not guilty to felony child endangerment charges.

Investigators allege the four kept 16 children — ranging from toddlers to teenagers — packed into a 12-by-12-foot room littered with feces and trash for years before the children were discovered and removed from the home.

NewsNation affiliates WOWK and WCMH have obtained birth records for four of the 16 rescued children, including the oldest, which list Elizabeth Siders as their mother and Gary Jr. as their father. WOWK and WCMH can not definitively comment on the parentage of the remaining children, and Archer said he does not “know that we have all of their birth certificates.”

Marriage licenses show Elizabeth Siders and Gary Jr. Siders married on March 31, 2008, in Mason County, West Virginia, at the ages of 15 and 18, respectively. At the time, they were living in nearby Gallipolis, Ohio, on the same street; both had completed a ninth-grade or lower level of education.

The case was shared widely on social media, sparking speculation as to whether Elizabeth Siders was also a victim, given her age at marriage.

“She’s willingly there at the home,” Ronnie Fletcher, Elizabeth’s brother-in-law, told WOWK. “She did not have a good home life when they got together, escaped to Lynn (Christina) and Gary’s home.”

Fletcher is married to one of Gary II’s four older sisters, who said they were unaware of the alleged abuse and “horrified” by the case. He said he grew up visiting the Siders’ home multiple times a week, and back then, they were a typical family. Fletcher said he did not know if there was domestic violence or other concerns in the home, but alleged Elizabeth Siders chose to be there.

Ohio closed marriage loophole for young teens in 2019

The revelations have thrust Ohio’s marriage laws back into the spotlight, five years after the state moved to close off the practice of child marriage.

That 2019 reform followed reporting by the Dayton Daily News that exposed how young, often pregnant, teens were being married off across the state.

Ohio Department of Health figures show the scale of the problem predating the fix: 15 children under 15 were married in Ohio between 2000 and 2024, including two girls who were only 10 years old in 2017, per the Dispatch.

Since 2000, more than 2,500 minors have married in the state, and the overwhelming majority — 96% — married adults.

But the 2019 law left a gap: it set 18 as the minimum marriage age while still allowing 17-year-olds to wed under specific circumstances, per the Dispatch.

State Sens. Bill Blessing, a Republican from Colerain Township, and Bill DeMora, a Columbus Democrat, introduced a bill this year to eliminate that carve-out. The effort has since lost momentum amid quiet opposition from some Senate Republicans, per the Dispatch.

Blessing said he still expects the bill to reach passage by December, pointing to the Siders case as proof that child marriage remains a live issue rather than, in his words, a relic of the past, per the Dispatch.

Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson, whose office is assisting in the investigation and prosecution, has also weighed in on the broader question of whether minors should be allowed to marry at all.

“We don’t allow kids to vote, we don’t allow them to buy cigarettes or alcohol,” Wilson told the Columbus Dispatch. “Very generally, I can say I’m not for young kids getting married.”