The Pontiac, Michigan, mother who is accused of abandoning her three children to live in squalor for years was charged Wednesday with felony child abuse.
Court records show Kelli Bryant, 34, was charged with three counts of first-degree child abuse. Though prosecutors initially declined to identify the mother in the case, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald disclosed Bryant’s name while announcing the charges Wednesday.
McDonald told reporters that her office would also represent the Department of Health and Human Services in terminating Bryant’s parental rights.
“We are simultaneously prosecuting the criminal case against mom and … neglect proceeding pertaining to the kids,” McDonald said. “We will be asking our client, the Department of Health and Human Services, to file a petition to terminate her rights.”
Court records do not list an attorney for Bryant, who was in county jail Wednesday.
Bryant was arrested last week after a landlord contacted the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a welfare check. The landlord expressed concern for three children living in the home after the mother stopped paying rent in October, the sheriff’s news release said.
Deputies arrived to find a boy and two girls living among trash, human waste and mold, according to the release. Authorities have not identified the children — aged 15, 13 and 12.
Sheriff Michael Bouchard described the living conditions “abuse of the highest order.”
“This situation would be deemed deplorable and intolerable for an animal, and it is utterly unacceptable for three children,” Bouchard said in a statement.
The boy told deputies that their mother had abandoned them around 2020 or 2021, and that they had been living off of food drop-offs that were left for them, the sheriff’s office said.
The office said they hadn’t received hygiene products from their mother since 2020.
McDonald said Wednesday that the deputies had to repeatedly assure the children they were there to help them. All three were “covered in feces” and the girls had trouble walking out of the apartment.
They were taken to a hospital where they showed signs of “severe neglect” and failed basic hygiene tests, such as brushing their teeth, because they had not done so in years, she said.
During interviews, the children said they had virtually no contact with their mother or the outside world in years, McDonald said. The children had not been attending school, according to authorities.
“The girls had not left the residence in several years, and her son had only left the home to go into the yard approximately two times,” she said. “Never venturing away from the house more than to check the mailbox.”
The children expressed fear over disobeying their mother, McDonald added.
The prosecutor alleged that Bryant “took active steps of lying and concealing to make sure the children went undiscovered.”
Asked why Bryant would leave her children in such conditions, McDonald says that prosecutors cannot get into the mind of someone else and sometimes there isn’t a reason.
