Four Young Brothers Lived In Feces, Spoke In Grunts, Parents Arrested

Four brothers aged two, four, five and six were found in a Denver home living in cat feces, communicating only in grunts and severely malnourished.

The police investigation was sparked when the youngest of the four brothers was taken by his mother, 35-year-old Lorinda Bailey, to the emergency room for treatment to a cut on his head.

The doctor on duty at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital, who attended to the child on September 29, said that the boy was unwashed, uncommunicative and smelt strongly of tobacco smoke.

While attending to the cut on the boy’s head the doctor also noticed bruising behind the child’s ear which may have been consistent with pinching. The police were notified and soon after the hospital visit they went to the house in Denver where the family lived.

When they arrived at the apartment they were faced with the unbearable smell of a decomposing animal. They were unable to locate the source of the smell but noticed a a large amount of flies swarming in one particular area.

They reported that there were at least five cats running freely in the apartment and that cat feces were scattered throughout. The brothers only communicated through grunting sounds and wore diapers due to the fact that none of them were toilet trained.

The other thing that struck the attending officers was that the children, despite their age difference, all seemed to be roughly the same size and at the same stage of development.

The children were placed in protective custody following the arrest of their parents. The affidavit notes that both Bailey and her husband, 66-year-old Wayne Sperling, had pleaded guilty to child abuse back in 2009.

The couple are due in court on Tuesday to face the charges levelled against them by the police and local childcare authorities.

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