Psychologist explains the victim to villain mindset in the Siders case | Ohio 16

 This all went down on June 30th, when they served an arrest warrant on Gary Jr. for public indecency. That’s how the case all came to light. The cops had no idea that when they served this arrest warrant, they were going to find 16 children inside this really run-down, quite frankly, dirty, bug-ridden house. And the prosecuting attorney, the attorney general, the sheriff of Vinton County, they all came out in a press conference and said this was a case of pure evil.

 Livestock is treated better than the way those children were, and they spent a good amount of their time in a 12×12 room. So, this took the internet by storm. I think things are dying down maybe a little bit now, but yeah, it’s shocking. It’s shocking. It’s even more shocking when you consider that the mother of these 16 children is only 33 years old.

She started having children at the age of 15. She married Gary Siders Jr. at the age of 15 when she was 7 months pregnant. That was in 2008 and she continued having children up until 2025. And she seems to have stopped now. There’s been allegations that she’s pregnant again, not according to her intake form when she was booked into Vinton County Jail.

Pregnant is no. What we’re going to do in this video is talk a little bit more about Elizabeth. Is she a victim or a villain? And we’re going to catch up on all things Seiders because I haven’t talked about this case for a few days. So, let’s go. All right, let’s start off with the fact that Gary Seiders Jr.

 is in court tomorrow. It’s his preliminary hearing for the public indecency case. And this is four instances of public indecency at his home. And it’s I think a neighbor or somebody has witnessed him revealing his private parts in public. Listen, I think this is nothing more than peeing on his porch, but we will find out a lot more details tomorrow at the preliminary hearing. That’s what it’s for.

 For the prosecutor to lay out the case and then the judge will decide whether there’s probable cause to take it to trial. So, we’ll wait and see. Now, interestingly, Gary Seiders Jr.’s attorney has put in a filing for the child endangerment charges. And this is 16 counts of child endangerment to have happened on or around the 30th of June.

Motion filed the bill of particulars as to the precise nature of what Gary Siders Jr. is being accused of. Now comes defendants through attorney Roberts Jr. attorney and respectfully requests the prosecuting attorney to furnish the defense with a bill of particulars setting up specifically the nature of the offenses charged and of the conduct of the defendant alleged to constitute the offense because we haven’t heard specifically what each of the different defendants four in total have been accused of other than child endangerment. Now, Gary

Siders Sr. Jr.’s dad, well, he’s in no fit state. No fit state. We’ve seen the videos of him being booked into Vinton County Jail and they had to help him to stand up. So, how is Gary Siders Sr. in any way going to be able to be in charge of children, to endanger them, to care for them or not? The guy is probably virtually bedridden.

 He had a stroke. He’s a really unwell man and he has been released from jail on his own recognizance because he needed serious medical attention. I’m expecting, honestly, the charges against Gary Sr. to be dropped. There have been a couple of nieces of the elder Siders come out and say that they remember Christina and Gary Sr.

 as being nice couple, always clean, clean house, looked after their kids. They doted on Gary Jr. These nieces think that Gary Jr. is the one who’s been controlling the whole family. And we do know that it’s only in the last, I’d say, year to 18 months that the Elder Siders and the Younger Siders family combined into one household.

 It’s not true that they’ve all been living together for 4 years and these children have been locked in a room for 4 years. That is blatantly not true. Because the Younger Siders family were not living there for 4 years. They went to live there sometime in 2025. That’s what it seems from the um property records I’ve been able to attain.

That is bad enough cuz that house really was bad. It really was bad. But we have to look beyond this and look at the legal particulars. This is what the defense is going to be doing. They’re going to be looking at the legal particulars. What each of these people charged with? And Christina Siders, Denise’s sister, has said that she must have dementia.

She seemed to follow direction in the booking in process. But that doesn’t mean to say that she’s not suffering from dementia. And quite possibly the Younger Siders moved in with the Elder Siders when Gary Sr. had a stroke and it’s all gone downhill from there. Particularly when Elizabeth, who we’re going to come on to in a moment, started having twins.

 She starts having twins beginning of 2022 when she’s already children. She has twins in February 2022. Then she has conjoined twins in November of 2022 who are born very early, 24 weeks gestation or thereabouts, and they only live for about an hour. So we’ve got grief on this as well, two little girls born joined at the chest died after about an hour.

And then she two more sets of twins in 2024 and 2025. So, three sets of twins, coping with grief, and 10 other children. And we know that in her previous address, when they lived in Gallia County, the six eldest children who were at school must have gone to school at some point, the six older children. The eldest at the time was 13.

 They were being chased by the county or whoever, the education people, because of truancy, that the children hadn’t been attending school. They were chasing them and couldn’t find them cuz they’d already moved. That’s in court documents for truancy. I’m wondering whether this all started to go down in 2021, when Elizabeth, maybe not coping really well at that point, she’d got 10 children, and whether the eldest were being kept off school to help with the younger ones.

I don’t know. I don’t know. And then, on top of that, we get three sets of twins under the age of four. We get another set of twins who die. So, we’ve got grief, we’ve got overwhelm, we’ve got probably postpartum depression. All of these things come into the mix, and we then start to build up a picture as to whether Elizabeth just wasn’t coping.

 Is she a victim or is she a villain? But, Gary Sides Jr., his attorney, has asked vital questions that every attorney dealing with the other three also need to ask. Counsel specifically requests the following. The names and addresses of each and every person who was present at the scene of any alleged crime charged in the indictment. So, that’s easy.

All right. We know everybody who was in that house, four adults. The precise manner in which the crime charged in the indictment is alleged to have been committed by the defendant. So, what specifically is Gary Jr. said to have done? His role in it. The exact language word or words are conduct allegedly used by defendant, which is alleged to constitute the indictment.

And the date and time of the allegations contained in the indictment. So, these are obvious questions. This is specific to Gary Jr., but for each of the four defendants, the same questions could be asked. What is that particular defendant said to have done? Is it just that these kids were in this dirty house? Is that it? Is that it? That’s all? Or is there more? This is what the defense teams are tr- well, certainly the one for Gary Jr.

 is trying to ascertain. Very good questions. Now, Elizabeth, let’s talk about Elizabeth. 18 children, 16 alive, born between 2008, when Elizabeth was 15, and 2025, when Elizabeth would have been around 31. That’s a lot of children in a relatively few years. It’s been said by Elizabeth’s attorney that she wants to see her children.

 Her defense team uh have put in a motion to get her released on her own recognizance, similar to Gary Sr. That hasn’t happened as far as we know. The judge hasn’t ruled on that as far as we know. Tommy Stolley, her defense attorney, has said that all she’s worried about is her children because she’s known nothing else. >> [snorts] >> Since she was 15 years old, she’s known nothing else.

 She’s been a mother and that’s it. That’s all. And the question is how much of Elizabeth’s role in this unfortunate circumstance is intentional, as in intentionally abusive, or is it all because Elizabeth is just completely completely overwhelmed? We’ve heard that she got somewhere with Christina, so in 2025 was it decided that they’d move in with the aldersiders and then they could help with Gary Sr.

‘s care. And caring for an elderly person who is suffering from a stroke, cognitive decline, that’s harder than looking after a kid, honestly. So, is this Elizabeth’s choice? Did she offer to do it, or was she forced to do it? And you know, there’s a lot of people saying that Elizabeth has been controlled by the aldersiders and by Gary Jr.

 Now that the aldersiders are in cognitive decline, well, who’s controlling Elizabeth now? Is it just Gary Jr.? Or is she not being controlled? Is this her choice? And if this is her choice, how much of this is due to mental ill health and quite frankly just being utterly overwhelmed, and how much of it is because she doesn’t like her children and she’s intentionally keeping them in a 12 by 12 room.

 We do know that those kids did play out. We do know that the older kids, at least up until 2025, had social media. One of them had a boyfriend. So, it’s just not true. The things that the prosecutors are alleging are just not true. And I think all that’s going to come out in court eventually. Uh this was interesting on NewsNation, and I’m just going to play a minute or so of this.

 So, this is Serving Justice with Sarah Azari. And it’s talking specifically about is Elizabeth a victim or a villain. >> The AG charged Ciders with abuse that caused serious physical harm. >> Is that the actual wording? Cuz we haven’t seen the court papers. The charge is child endangerment. So, we don’t know whether there’s any physical abuse or whether the endangerment is because of the state of the house.

 We don’t know those things yet. And the mainstream media has used this case got hundreds of thousands of views per video because the prosecuting attorney and the attorney general and the sheriff of Vinton County have used really inflammatory language. And there’s a gag order now, so not going to be coming out and speaking anymore, but it’s riled up the mainstream media.

 And it’s the mainstream media of perpetuating this quite frankly misinformation in my opinion. >> That means the state isn’t alleging that she merely failed to act or was neglectful or reckless. It’s alleging affirmative abuse. >> Is it though? Cuz we haven’t seen what they’ve actually been indicted on. >> And let me tell you that is devastating for Ciders’ victim narrative here.

 Why? I was controlled and passive and didn’t know how to get out. That’s a story about omission. The charge here is about commission. >> Is it though? Again, is it? Have we seen the indictment? No. >> Committing abuse or abusive acts. Those two things will not sit together comfortably in front of a jury. They’re not easy to reconcile.

>> Yeah, they’re not easy to reconcile if they happened. >> Now, caveat. We haven’t seen the indictment. The grand jury can re >> Oh, we haven’t seen the indictment. Oh. So, we don’t know what is actually being alleged. >> charge add counts or restructure the counts. But as charged today, the degree tells you the prosecution’s theory that this is serious.

>> Yeah, because the prosecution came out and said this is an act of pure evil. But they also said that they’d live there for 4 years, the kids are locked up in a 12 by 12 room, which is provably false. >> And these were affirmative acts of abuse and the impact it has on the victim narrative. Very hard to reconcile being a victim and actually being abusive.

 Maybe a psychologist can come in and explain why a victim of abuse or neglect can act this way towards not just her abuser, but children that she’s supposed to protect. >> Well, I can do that because I’m a psychologist and up to 2021, I was being a psychologist for over 20 years. Do you know what? This is a very common thing.

 This is one of my areas of expertise. People who are, usually women, being controlled by a patriarchal terrorist or intimate terrorist. It’s a type of domestic abuser, look it up, and they’re control the entire family. But, the people who are being controlled basically fight amongst each other. You start abusing dogs, right? And then, lock them in a room together.

What happens? They all start fighting with each other. Because the so stressed that neurochemical imbalance that it creates, that stress response it creates, they all just start fighting with each other. We see sibling aggression being very high in abusive households where there’s a controller and everyone else is a victim.

 We see sibling aggression that’s high, aggression against pets is high, and the mother of the children, she’s also a victim. She’s also being abused by the intimate terrorist, the controller. And she will commit acts of abuse against her children in this mindset of total and utter stress. But, I don’t think that this has happened in this case, or at least we don’t know if it has.

 And I want you all to go and find the research on Seligman’s dogs. Seligman’s dogs. Dogs were put in cages which had electrified floors. Horrendous, horrendous, horrendous. And every so often, they sent an electric shock through the floor. And the dog didn’t know when the shock was coming, they didn’t know why it was coming, and these dogs were so utterly traumatized at the end of the experiment that even when the experimenters left the doors open, the dogs did not leave.

The dogs were so traumatized, they could not save themselves. And Seligman’s dogs, however cruel and inhumane it was, it has been used again and again and again to explain why victims of severe abuse, whether that be a partner, whether that be children, why they do not leave. It takes a huge a huge amount of something that probably I can’t even put into words to save yourself, even if the door is open, once you get into that state of learned helplessness and learned hopelessness.

So, if there is a patriarchal terrorist or intimate terrorist in that household taking out the elder siders for being cognitively challenged, it’s going to be Gary Jr. Well, is he the one who is controlling everybody else? We don’t know. We don’t know. This is why his attorneys want to know exactly what the prosecutors are saying that he particularly is indicted to have done.

And we don’t have any of that information. So, this kind of conversation is incredibly premature. We don’t know if there’s been any abuse at all in that household. And that the child endangerment is simply for the house, that the children were in this house. That yeah, it’s dangerous. There’s bugs everywhere.

 It’s it’s germ-ridden. If that’s it, then what you’ve got is a family who is incredibly overwhelmed, has gotten far over their heads, and now can’t ask for help because they know they get the kids taken away. They can’t help themselves because they’ve got too far along that path. So, it’s premature.

 I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m saying we don’t know if it happened. So, all of this narrative that the mainstream media are spinning, that’s rialing up social media, “Oh, burst him up!” the prosecutors have said, is just incredibly premature. We don’t know the facts, so stop talking like we do. We don’t know the facts. All right, guys.