Malista Ness-Hopkins, 38, faces charges of abuse and neglect after social services found her kids, ages two and three, trapped inside cribs which had bars screwed on top
A Virginia woman who allegedly kept her young children in makeshift cages has made bail.
Malista Ness-Hopkins, 38, faces charges of abuse and neglect after social services found her kids, ages two and three, trapped inside cribs which had bars screwed on top.
Her other three children were found living in squalor at the home in Mears on Virginia’s Eastern Shore.
Kate Bonniwell, a social services worker, described the shocking scene when she entered Ness-Hopkins’ home on July 28 after receiving a complaint, Delmarva Now reported.
She told the court at a preliminary hearing Friday, that it had taken more than 20 minutes with an electric screwdriver for her to remove the top of the makeshift cage to free the toddlers.
While she did so, the two-year-old was hissing at her and making ‘animal sounds,’ she said. When she finally did get the lid off, the child simply lay there, as if they didn’t know what to do next.
Video from WBOC
‘The children didn’t act like normal children,’ she said.
Bonniwell said the two-year-old, three-year-old, and a one-year-old baby whose crib did not have a cages lid, wore filthy diapers and were ‘infested with lice’.
Her other three children were found living in squalor at the home (pictured) in Mears on Virginia’s Eastern Shore
Bars were nailed across the windows at the property, while inside was much worse
Social services described the home as filed with trash, rotting food and infested with fleas
In another room, a five- and a six-year-old were lying on a bare, ripped up mattress.
The entire home stank of urine, she told the court, and the home’s only bathroom had a broken toilet seat, and was filled with black water.
Meanwhile, the bathroom’s sink and bathtub were filled with plates of rotting food and trash.
The children were immediately seized from the home.
The children were removed from the home on July 28, the day social workers visited. Ness-Hopkins faces five counts of abuse and neglect charges (file image)
Malista Ness-Hopkins, 38, of Virginia, was arrested and charged with child abuse and neglect, after two of her five children were found locked in filthy makeshift cages. Ness-Hopkins appeared in court (file) on Friday where her attorney told a judge his client was ‘overwhelmed’
Defense attorney Tucker Watson told the judge that Ness-Hopkins was ‘overwhelmed’.
Ness-Hopkins told officials when she was arrested that she has been a stay-at-home mother for 17 but that her boyfriend and baby daddy Tommy Annis died in May 2016 at age 33.
He argued that there was no evidence that the conditions in the home ‘were directly harmful to the children’.
The judge disagreed and sent the charges to a grand jury.
‘This did not happen overnight,’ Judge Croxton Gordon said. ‘She said she only screwed them in when she couldn’t mind them. But she was there.’