Four family members related to Serah Bellar, who was reported missing on April 3 last year at the age of 16, were indicted by an Athens County Grand Jury on Tuesday.Â
Robert, 54, and Deborah Bellar, 49, of Athens, parents of Serah Bellar and 17 other children, are charged with engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, a second-degree felony, and two charges of endangering children, both third-degree felonies.Â
The endangering children charges list Serah Bellar and another child as victims.Â
âThe Bellar family formed an enterprise in order to maintain control in the home, their cult-like beliefs based on their religious following, and caused physical, emotional, and psychological harm to their children,â their indictments, filed on May 18, state.Â
An Athens County judge recently struck down a motion to dismiss a $1 million civil lawsuit filed in January by a Glouster woman following the reported sexual abuse that she experienced as a minor by a since-dismissed priest.
Steubenville Bishop Jeffrey Monforton is the sole defendant of the suit, which alleges that he ânegligently failed to investigate and protect⦠to interveneâ in regard to reports of acts of sexual exploitation by his employee, ex-priest Henry Christopher Foxhoven.
The motion to dismiss was filed by the defendant in March.
âThe Court is unpersuaded at this point that the plaintiffâs complaint is one that cannot possibly succeed,â Athens County Common Pleas Court Judge George P. McCarthy in May noted in his decision. âThis is not to say the complaint ultimately will prevail or that the defense has no forceful arguments. Rather, it is a conclusion that the case should not be dismissed at the initial pleading stage.â
Really, the tale begins with an orphaned fox kit and a barn.
Several years ago, a vixen came to a barn that rests near the edge of the Mansfield Road property of Robert and Sheila Peterson. Soon, the couple saw the fox and kits appear. Sadly, the mother died, and only one kit from her litter survived. The Petersons referred to this kit simply as âBabyâ every time they saw her emerge from the barn.
That kit grew and later came back to the barn to have kits of her own, with The Peterson identifying her by her striking âsocks.â The Petersons then referred to her as âMamaâ or âMama Socks.â
For The Times Leader MARIETTA, Ohio The Washington County Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday afternoon the arrest of a suspect in the series of bomb and active shooter threats in southeast Ohio schools over the last six days.
Nicholas John Frances Hall, 18, of 1385 Washington Road, Thomson, Ga., was arrested in McDuffie County, Ga., by the McDuffie County Sheriff’s Office.
Washington County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Mark Warden announced the arrest after a multi-agency investigation Tuesday.
According to the affidavit submitted to Marietta Municipal Court by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday for a warrant uploaded to the National Crime Information Center, Hall allegedly confessed to a deputy sheriff of the Georgia agency that “he made the bomb threats to get his girlfriend out of school.”
jpatterson@mariettatimes.com
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office announced Tuesday afternoon the arrest of a suspect in the series of bomb and active shooter threats in southeast Ohio schools over the last six days.
Nicholas John Frances Hall, 18, of 1385 Washington Road, Thomson, Ga., was arrested in McDuffie County, Ga., by the McDuffie County Sheriff’s Office.
Washington County Sheriff’s Chief Deputy Mark Warden announced the arrest after a multi-agency investigation Tuesday.
Hall, according to FBI records, has a past criminal charge out of Lee County, Fla., for a first-degree misdemeanor of battery from March of 2018.
According to the affidavit submitted to Marietta Municipal Court by the Washington County Sheriff’s Office on Tuesday for a warrant uploaded to the National Crime Information Center, Hall allegedly confessed to a deputy sheriff of the Georgia agency that “he made the bomb threats to get his girlfriend out of school.”