Franklin County grand juries have indicted two women on child endangerment and strangulation charges after two children ran away from their home and reported physical abuse to police, according to court records.
Two children, ages 8 and 10, ran away about 11 a.m. May 18 from their home in the 1400 block of Pine Street in Hamilton Township, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in the Franklin County Municipal Court. They brought a backpack with personal items and a laundry basket full of clothes, the affidavit states.
The adoptive parents of the two children, Julie Barfield, 47, and Kim Brown-Barfield, 43, noticed they were missing sometime between 11:30 p.m. and midnight. Brown-Barfield drove around for two hours searching for the children before calling 911, according to the affidavit.
A resident at a home a few hundred feet away, in the 6500 block of Spruce Drive, flagged down Franklin County Sheriff’s deputies, who found the children at the home. One of the children had a bloody lip, and one of them described being slammed into a wall earlier in the day, prosecutors alleged in the affidavit.
During a forensic interview, the children said they were denied food, beaten with a belt, slammed into walls, forced to drink hot water and placed into scalding water as punishment, prosecutors alleged in the affidavit. Franklin County Children Services took custody of six other children, ranging in ages from 1 to 11, in the two women’s care.
Barfield and Brown-Barfield initially faced child endangerment and endangering children charges in Franklin County Municipal Court. Grand juries indicted them May 28 on five counts each of endangering children and one count of strangulation or suffocation.
The women pleaded not guilty to the charges. They remained at the Franklin County Jail as of the afternoon of June 2.
Public safety and breaking news reporter Bailey Gallion can be reached at bagallion@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Hamilton Township women indicted after children run away, allege abuse
Reporting by Bailey Gallion, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
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