Siders Family Married Off Girls As Young As WHAT?!

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:06)
A retired judge in Galea County, Ohio, was asked whether he remembered approving a marriage between a 14-year-old girl and a 48-year-old man. His name is William S. Medley. He said he vaguely remembered, said he recalled there was one where somebody was really young. He acknowledged that neither prosecutors nor Children's Protective Services were ever involved in the case, that 14-year-old married into the Siders family. The groom, Richard E. Siders, was a cousin of Gary Siders Sr., who is now charged with 16 counts of child endangerment in Vinton County, Ohio. 16 children found in a 12 by 12 room. Some allegedly couldn't speak. Some allegedly couldn't write their own names. Two were airlifted to trauma centers. The Ohio Attorney General called the conditions prolonged and extreme inter-familial neglect. And the judge who helped set it in motion said he vaguely remembers. Yeah, there was a young in there. But, you know, we either have these parts we just kind of, you know, live and let live. He didn't say that. That's my conjecture, but...
I mean, my God, can you imagine being that judge? Oh, 48 and 14 You guys must have a lot in common. Of course we're going to approve this. Under Ohio's own criminal code, an adult's involvement with a person between 13 and 15 is a felony, classified as unlawful conduct with a minor. The age of consent is 16 So whatever allegedly happened to Tessie Wright before that wedding, whatever resulted in a 14 year old being pregnant by a 48 year old could have been prosecuted, but the marriage itself, perfectly legal. One section of the state's code said it was a crime. Another section said, sign here. Did you put some some extra cans of those empty baked beans on the back of your pinto as you're driving away with it? Just married? You misspelled it. Yes, it's yes. I'm sorry. Oh, you can't spell just marry. Oh, you can't spell it all. Oh. Oh, you don't drive either. Oh, oh, well. Oh, well, here you go. Congratulations.
Two sections of the same state's code pulling in opposite directions. Guess which one won?
Tessie Wright was 14 and pregnant on December 2nd of 2002 She stood in Gallia County courthouse with her parents, Donald and Brenda Wright, two geniuses who, of course, consented to the marriage.
Judge William S. Medley consented and Tessie married Richard E. Siders, a 48-year-old man, a cousin of Gary Siders Sr. According to Tessie's own statement to the New York Times, the age gap between them was 34 years. The law did not require anyone to question it.

**Tony Brueski** (3:14)
I know, I know.

**Tony Brueski** (3:16)
It's like we think we're so advanced and like, oh, we don't do things like that in this country.

**Tony Brueski** (3:25)
Yes, we do.

**Tony Brueski** (3:26)
We just like to pretend it doesn't happen. Then when it gets brought to our attention, we la la la la la. Don't talk about it. I want to click on another story so I don't have to absorb this insanity. Well, sorry. Absorb away.
The Dayton Daily News investigated Ohio's child marriage records in 2017 They found 4,443 girls aged 17 or younger married in Ohio between 2000 and 2015
59 were 15 or younger. Three were 14 Tessie Wright was one of those three. Most people assume child marriage is something that happens in other countries. No, Ohio.
These are Ohio courthouse records. Filed in county clerk's offices, stamped with official seals, stored in state databases that anyone with an open records request can pull. She wasn't alone, not even inside the same family. A year later, in 2003, in the same county, Gallia County, a 15-year-old girl named Virginia Siders married a man named Joshua Saunders. According to state records obtained by the Columbus Dispatch, same courthouse system, same legal framework, same family orbit, same cluster of rural towns in Appalachian, Ohio, where everybody knows everybody and nobody asks anything. Two teenage brides, one year apart, one county, one extended family network. And then in 2008, it happened a third time. Elizabeth Russell was 15 years old and seven months pregnant when she married Gary Siders Jr. in Mason County, West Virginia. They were living on the same street in Galapas, Ohio. Two houses apart according to marriage records obtained by WOWK. She had an eighth grade education. She had a he had a ninth grade education, so he was he was 18 They were both from Galea County, but crossed the state line into West Virginia to get married at the Mason County Courthouse, a jurisdiction that at the time had no minimum age for marriage at all.