DAYTON, Ohio — An Ohio couple who kept a young girl in a barricaded bathroom for years when she wasn’t in school are in jail after the 9-year-old told a school nurse about how she was being treated, police said yesterday.
Dayton police Sergeant Larry Tolpin said Brian G. Hart, 50, and Rivae Hart, 49, were in the Montgomery County jail on charges of kidnapping and child endangerment.
The girl, Rivae Hart’s granddaughter, was kept in an area consisting of a half-bathroom and a small edge of a hallway blocked by two stacked dressers topped by a wooden mattress board, Tolpin said yesterday. He said the girl slept on a cot with only a blanket.
“It was a deplorable situation,’’ Tolpin said.
The Harts have been the legal guardians of the girl and her 8-year-old brother since 2004. The brother and the Harts’ 12-year-old and 14-year-old sons were not confined, Tolpin said. All of the children are now in foster care.
Tolpin said the couple told police they confined the girl because of behavioral problems.
“Apparently that was their assessment when at age 3 she hit her 2-year-old brother on the head with a plastic telephone,’’ Tolpin said.
The fourth-grader has had no problems at school, he said.
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