Prosecutor: Couple treated special needs children 'worse than prisoners of war in their own home'

A Clermont County couple has been indicted on five counts of child endangering.Matthew "Matt" Edmonson and Charles "Chuck" Edmonson are accused of torturing and cruelly abusing their five adopted children. Clermont County prosecutors said the children are all biological siblings and were originally brought to the married couple as foster children, with each eventually being adopted by the pair. The children have been in and out of the hospital for various reasons, such as bruising, bleach burns, potential internal bleeding, and failure to thrive, all of which prosecutors said were explained away by their parents.Charles Edmonson is currently serving three years in prison for engaging in sexual relations with a different adopted son, an adult at the time, who had been groomed early on from a young age. As a result of that arrest, detectives with the Clermont County Sheriff's Office said they recovered numerous videos of the defendants treating their special needs children worse than prisoners of war in their own home. "The videos of these undernourished and naked children huddled up in a locked room in the basement, on the stone-cold basement floor like a pile of puppies trying to stay together to keep warm, are nothing short of gut-wrenching. These two are unfit to be parents, and I am grateful to those who have worked tirelessly to make sure they will not be. Unfortunately, this isn't the first time and will not be the last time that my office has had to seek indictment for people like this who pretend to be 'parents,'" Prosecuting Attorney Mark J. Tekulve said.The family's home is on Madison Park Drive in Batavia.One neighbor who asked not to be identified said he is outraged."I hope they both rot for what they have done," he said. Others, like Julie Shepherd, were in disbelief."I know Matt and have known Matt for years. I absolutely adore Matt. I adore those boys," Shepherd said. "I mean, she gets all the boys up. She had them very regimented. They got in line. They got their meds. They got their bath. They got their breakfast. This woman knocks herself out to take care of these kids, and I will not believe that they kept them locked in the basement naked until I see the actual video." "She (Matt) is a very dangerous person. She is not the person that these people are portraying her to be," the unidentified neighbor said.During Matt Edmonson's arraignment on Wednesday, prosecutors described the room the children were kept in as a "dungeon."Chuck Edmonson has not yet been arraigned on the new charges.