Children left alone in filth, jury told; Montvale couple on trial in endangerment
Record, The (Hackensack, NJ)
Author: By KIBRET MARKOS, STAFF WRITER
Armed with a search warrant and accompanied by a police officer, Montvale's building code official entered a West Grand Avenue house in October 2002 looking for construction violations.
But instead of shaky foundations and leaky pipes, he said, he found two disheveled young children locked in a squalid room, eating cereal with coffee creamer.
The children were kept in the room by themselves for nearly four hours, with no food in the refrigerator or clothes in the closet, said Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Patricia Baglivi said Wednesday, opening a child endangerment trial of the youngsters' adoptive parents.
"These children were sitting by themselves in a room that can only be described as filthy, smelling of urine, with no baby monitor or no phone if they needed to call for help," she told jurors.
Michael and Maureen Culhane face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. The trial could end as early as today.
Lawyers for the couple argued Wednesday that the children - a 3-year-old boy and a 5-year-old girl, both adopted from Latvia - weren't neglected or physically abused.
"What this case comes down to is living in a dirty house," said Mark Musella, the lawyer for Maureen Culhane. "It's not a crime to live in a dirty house."
The first - and possibly only - witness in the trial was Raymond Dressler, who told jurors that the shabby, 26-room house was on his agenda soon after he became the borough's construction code official in 2001.
Debris, garbage, and furniture were always piled in front of the house, and he spoke to the Culhanes several times about it, Dressler testified.
"But the problem never got solved," he said.
Dressler said he obtained a warrant on Oct. 18, 2002, to search the home for code compliance. On his way there, he said, he saw the Culhanes driving in the opposite direction, without the children.
Dressler told jurors he waited at the house for about 3 1/2 hours before the couple returned in the afternoon.
He said he and a borough police officer then approached Michael Culhane and showed him the warrant. Culhane said he needed to go to the back of the house to let them in through the front door because the lock on the front door was not working, Dressler testified.
As they waited on the front porch, he said, Michael Culhane shouted to his wife: "Get the children out of the house. The cops are here and they are going to search the house."
Once inside, Dressler said, he and the patrolman took the stairs to the second floor and found the children in a bedroom with three locks.
Maureen Culhane at first said she was home with the children but later admitted she had gone shopping with her husband, Dressler said.
Michael Culhane's attorney, Frank Lucianna, stressed during cross-examination that Dressler didn't see anyone unlock the bedroom door and had no way of knowing whether the children were locked in the bedroom when they were found.
The house, which the Culhanes bought in 1997, was declared uninhabitable after the Oct. 18, 2002, inspection, he said.
The two children have since been placed in a foster home under the custody of the state Division of Youth and Family Services, Baglivi said.
In a somewhat similar case, the Culhanes were convicted in June 2002 of neglecting an 87-year-old woman in a rooming house they operated in Pearl River, N.Y. Michael Culhane was sentenced to six months in the Rockland County Jail and his wife to 416 hours of community service on weekends. Both were placed on five years' probation as part of the plea agreement, records show.