What Elizabeth Siders' Own Attorney Is Saying About Her

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

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
Let's go over to another horrific story that's been making the headlines in this last week or two. The Siders, 16 children, pulled from a 12 by 12 room in a rural Ohio home, some able to speak, covered in human waste. And the only reason anyone found them is because the father was out showing his junk to the neighbors, allegedly. How nice. Four members of the Sider family now face 64 combined felony counts, but the gag order just shut down the flow of information to the public. The grandfather walked out of jail because the county couldn't afford to keep him. And Gallia County had truancy complaints on six of the kids five years ago that were never actually served. We couldn't serve them. Next, defense attorney and former prosecutor Eric Faddis is with myself and Robin Drake to help break all this down. I want to get to the gag order right away because obviously, this is something that the attorneys for the Sider, for Gary Senior Junior, one of them got into place here.
Yes, of course, a gag order quite oftentimes does benefit the defendant. But I'm seeing this as a little more beneficial to the state. I'm seeing this as a little more beneficial to all the departments, all the places, all the people that are going to be asked the question, that are being asked the question, that are being pulled to task and saying, how the hell did this happen? How did these kids five years ago just, well, can't locate them? Next, there was a lot of signs, and a lot of signs were ignored or forgotten about, or there wasn't staff to take care of them, or whatever. There's a lot of excuses at play here as to how they got to this state. And that gag order, well, I can't answer those questions about that because there's a gag order.
How convenient, Eric?

**Eric Faddis** (2:10)
Exactly. You know, Robin was talking earlier about how you repair trust in a community. You talk about transparency. You talk about being forthcoming, things like that. This seems like the opposite of that. Because when you hear the allegations, there's automatically kind of a lack of trust in the systems and structures in place. They're supposed to regulate society like making sure kids are okay. And then instead of the avenue of the government saying, hey, let us show you what we did. Let us show you why we couldn't serve these truancy complaints. Let us tell you about our actions. It's going to be the exact opposite. Like I said, oh, sorry, we can't talk about that. There's a gag order.
Well, my gosh, how can the public trust that other kids are going to be kept safe if these allegations are true and if they can't get any information from the government about it?

**Tony Brueski** (3:02)
I mean, exactly. I think that's the big reason. Obviously, these kids have been found. I've been saying from the moment I heard this story, this is not a one-off case. Maybe it's a one-off that there's 16 of them in a 12 by 12 space. But it's not a one-off in terms of, oh, there's a couple of houses down the road that got two or three kids, and there's a couple up that way they got a kid. There's a couple up that way, and this way, and that way that are living in these abhorrent conditions with mutant-like family members that are charged with being parents and raising them, and the county looks the other way, well, there's nothing we can do. I mean, now that they have been called to task on this, they're like, we have no money to deal with this. So of course, they had no money to deal with it to begin with. They're only like, shit, now our feet are being held to the fire and we're broke. I mean, it's really exposing a system, and I wouldn't say it's corruption, but it's ineptness.
More than anything else, on paper, we have these systems. On paper, we have, okay, this happens, that happens. See something, say something, the do something is the part that's missed. And we get to the do something part, and it's like, well, yes, it is our job to do that, but we're understaffed, we're underfunded. And well, we just lost track of that shit.

**Robin Drake** (4:17)
The gag order really gets me on this one right now, because again, that lack of transparency on a critical case like this, and Tony and Todd, I know I texted you last night, so I'm gonna give props to my amazing daughter, who is a labor and delivery nurse for the last six years. And I gave her this case, I said, what would you do?