A mentally impaired woman identified as S.E. and her daughter were taken from an Ashland, Ohio residence in October, after years of forced labor. Today, homeowners and residents Daniel Brown, 33, Jordie Callahan, 26, and Jessica Hunt, 31 (pictured below) were charged in a case involving threats made with pit bulls, a poisonous coral snake, a ball python, and a 130-pound Burmese python.
29-year-old S.E., who has the functioning mental capacity of a 13-year-old due to blunt force trauma to the head at 16, was caught shoplifting a candy bar in October 2012. The investigation reportedly began when she asked to be taken to jail because Brown, Callahan, and Hunt “were mean to her” according to a police statement. After being invited into the home in 2011, she and her daughter, now 5, were lived in inhumane conditions: forced to sleep on the cement floor, injured and denied pain medication, housed with the pets they were forced to take care of, threatened, and beaten, writes NBCNews.com.
Their captors also apparently forced S.E. to hit her child, recorded the incident with a cell phone, and threatened to reveal it if she ever tried to escape, says the AP.com. The defendants have all pled not guilty, and the attorney representing Callahan, Andrew Hyde, claims the police planted the story in S.E.’s mind. “She was never forced to do anything. She used this story to get out of trouble she was in.”