Feb 22, 2007 7:38 pm US/Eastern
L.I. Home Turned Into House Of Bottled Human Waste
Three Children Found Living In Squalor With Their Mother
LINDENHURST (CBS) ―
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Hundreds of bottles and cups filled with urine were found scattered among the incredibly filthy house that Raymond Young's three daughters lived in.
CBS
A Long Island woman found living in squalor with her three children was under investigation Thursday after a neighbor made a call to the children's father last week, worried about the children's well-being. That's because inside the home police were stunned to find hundreds of bottles of urine, feces, soiled clothes, a dead cat, piles of garbage and used toilet tissue scattered everywhere.
It was the same scene of filth that greeted 42-year-old Raymond Young Jr., the children's estranged father, who is now fighting for custody of his three daughters that he says he hasn't seen in six years.
"Urine in bottles, no plumbing, no toilet," Young told CBS 2. "There was just feces all over, [it's the] most horrible situation you could ever imagine."
On Thursday morning a very sensitive proceeding was going on in a Suffolk County courtroom where the fate of Young's daughters, who were supposedly under the supervision of a Suffolk County Law Guardian, was being discussed.
"We have everybody that we can muster up trying to make sure they are safe. We have the police involved and my lawyers, they are back there with the judge," Young said.
Young compared the living conditions of his daughters, ages 10, 12, and 14, to a war camp, calling them "prisoners." He used to live in the Nevada Street home in Lindenhurst with his wife, Deborah. But during their bitter six year separation, he says he had not seen the girls or their filthy and unhealthy living conditions.
"We had our issues, but nothing to this extreme. Maybe something happened, she got sick or mental," Young said.
When a neighbor called him to alert him to what type of home the girls were living in, he says he broke in through a back window and discovered the disgusting scene inside. "I couldn't even hold my breath, I had to run out," he said.
Friends of the three girls say they always suspected something was wrong, but had no idea the girls lived like this. "We used to say there were in the witness protection program, just joking around, but we never thought the mother had anything wrong with her. We just thought she was overprotective," Aimee Wagner said.
Raymond Young now hopes the children will be placed under his custody, but for now the children are still with their mother, upstate at her parents' house.
A judge had ordered the woman and the children to return to the area by the end of the day Thursday. A court appearance is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. Friday.
(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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