A Dorset Township couple was sentenced to 10 years each in prison Monday, after pleading guilty in May to abusing their adopted children physically and psychologically.
Ashtabula County Common Pleas Judge Marianne Sezon sentenced both David, 60, and Rejeana Moss, 66, to two consecutive years on each of their four felony counts of endangering children and one count of felonious assault, with three years probation to follow. Each charges carries a maximum three-year prison sentence.
Prosecutors alleged the Mosses locked four of their adopted children in their rooms “virtually all day, every day,” withholding food, leaving them without beds to sleep on and giving them buckets and a metal container to use as toilets, said county Prosecutor Nick Iarocci.
Though the Mosses claimed to home-school their children, the kids said they never followed through. Their bedroom windows were reportedly boarded, with curtains stapled to window frames, to keep them from looking outside. One child made notches in a bedpost to keep track of the day of the week.
Discipline in the home was also excessively harsh and physical, according to prosecutors and the children. A paddle later found by investigators at the home bore permanent bloodstains.
“I am sorry that my failure has continued to burden these children’s lives,” David Moss told the court through a statement attorney Paul Miller read for him as he struggled with tears. “Knowing that (it was) my lack of ability to parent these children with all these special needs has been very disheartening.
“Due to the lack of education and experience, I failed. For this, I’m very sorry to the children and the court.”
The Mosses accepted a plea bargain on May 9, admitting to about half of the abuse charges. The original indictment in February 2015 also included kidnapping and sexual abuse charges against the couple’s two juvenile daughters, which were dropped as part of the plea deal.
The couple’s attorneys, Miller and Cory Hinton, sought probation for both, citing otherwise clean criminal records and Rejeana Moss’ health issues, which require regular blood checkups.
Rejeana Moss told the court “the past is always more clear than the situation at-hand.”
“I have spent many hours, days and months praying and going over my years as a parent,” she told the court. “I have looked hard at both my successes and failure. I have looked at how my parenting has had to change with different children, the times, outside influences, problems and/or disabilities of the children that have come into our home.
“I have never wanted to hurt any child,” she continued. “I am sorry that these children have been hurt in any way by me. I hope and pray they find peace and full lives as I have tried and failed to do.”
Last year, Ryan Moss — one of the Mosses’ adopted sons who left the home in 2009 — told the Star Beacon he had alerted the county Children Services Board to the conditions in the home four years before authorities removed the three other adopted children from the home. The children weren’t removed until September 2013 — one month after the Mosses’ adopted juvenile daughters escaped the home by stealing and later crashing the family van.
He said he even gave children services his diary, which they kept as possible evidence. But Ryan Moss said he felt his initial abuse claims were brushed off in 2009, and the girls and the developmentally disabled adult male remained in the home for another four years.
It’s unclear how the Mosses were investigated at that time, as complainants are not necessarily kept in the loop once abuse claims are lodged and department cases are not public record, according to CSB officials.
The Mosses’ older adopted daughter recalled in her statement showing her homework to the Mosses. For every paper that contained a mistake, she received 10 spankings with the aforementioned paddle.
“It was 30 papers,” she wrote. “When they were done, there was blood on the paddle. It was horrible. They gave me 300 spankings. I hated them so much.”
She and her younger sister also recalled physical attacks from Rejeana Moss — but neither knew what they did to incur them, they wrote.
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