16 Siders Kids: What 'Feral' Actually Means For Them

**SPEAKER_1** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
The Attorney General said the children looked almost feral. Some can't speak, some can't read, an 18-year-old can't write her own name. These 16 children spent their entire lives inside homes that functioned as a sealed world. No school, no doctors, no outside contact. Shavaun Scott is with us to help us break all of this down. I want to go to an interesting thing that was said by her attorney, Elizabeth's attorney. She said that the first thing that she asked about, and I think this has struck people as being a little bit odd, wasn't about getting out, it was about her children. Some people hear that and they're like, oh, she's a devoted mom in some weird sense of the term.
Or something else. There's a weird sense of distortion here.
Can she be someone who believes she was taking the best care of the children that she could and it still be this insanely harsh hell hole of a reality, but in her mind, she was just being mom on a Tuesday in the world that she knew.

**Shavaun Scott** (1:21)
And these poor kids were probably the extent of her, if you want to use the word love, you know, this was probably all she had was her attachment with these kids. And in all likelihood, she has a very strong attachment to them. But what does that mean? You know, it doesn't mean you know how to raise them properly. You don't know what you're doing. But clearly she had an emotional bond. And I don't think this living situation was about any ill intent on her part, is my guess. She was not trying to hurt the children. Now, there may have been other people in the home who were hurting the children. But my guess is that, you know, these kids meant the world to her. They were her world to her. That's all she had was these children.

**Tony Brueski** (2:09)
But you see those pictures of that house, if the interior pictures are are legit, and that's still, I think, up in the air as of this recording. But from what we can tell, I mean, in any sense of the world, I mean, how does anybody's mind look at this and go, yeah, I'm doing my best for my kids?
That's the hard thing to wrap one's mind around.

**Shavaun Scott** (2:37)
Hoarding is such, and, you know, of course, we have hoarding and beyond here. We have hoarding on steroids with the filth and everything. But hoarding is surprisingly common, and I do meet up with that quite often in my work. The interesting thing about people with hoarding disorder is they never come to therapy and say, I want help because I'm a hoarder. They hide that, and they hide it from the world, they hide it from the therapist. But when I often find out about it, is when I'll interview a family member, and it may be someone in the home, it might be a sibling of an adult.
And often when that person says, well, you know about the condition of the home, don't you? And I'm like, no, of course not. I don't go out to people's homes. I don't know what they live in. But I've met very professional people that appear well, well dressed, well groomed, well put together, and yet they are hoarders. And when I heard this from family members, all of a sudden the kids' problems make sense.
Then I understand more about what's going on. But it's very hard to treat, because hoarders, even though they know, perhaps know enough to be embarrassed about it, it really is a brain abnormality, and it's such a strong compulsion for them. It's not something that they typically seek help with. So you'll find a lot of people who appear, I'm thinking of professional people who appear to be teachers, and lawyers, and people that you'd look at, and go, well, they've obviously got a normal life, or they've got it together, but they live in homes like that.

**Tony Brueski** (4:13)
These people had neither going on. That's the thing, there's no profession. I mean, there's obviously, there's a level of shame that I'm sure exists, which then makes people kind of circle the wagons, and you got four adults here that basically, is that part of what goes on? You get four people who are all living in this circle of shame, and it's so deep and so dark that, I mean, it's just so normalized at a certain point that it's not even felt as shame. This is just the lifestyle of what it is, and they can't see beyond it. There's, I'm sure there's a fear element of being exposed, of having your children taken away. There's probably so many things at play here, but they are never pulling a single lever to remove those threats that they fear. But that is addiction as well. I mean, that is the deaf. It's an alcoholic. It's addicted to this, whatever.