Mother torments children with ice-cold baths, chemical burns

INDIANAPOLIS -- An Indianapolis woman whose home a prosecutor described as a "house of horrors" formerly worked as a house parent in a northern Indiana group home.\nMary Corrigan, 33, and two other women have been charged with six counts of neglect involving Corrigan's three children. The children, who often were forced to sleep and eat meals in a bathroom, also suffered burns from chemicals they were required to use in scrubbing floors and toilets, Marion County Prosecutor Carl Brizzi said.\n"These kids were living in a house of horrors, the modern-day equivalent of a torture chamber," Brizzi said. "The 10-year-old boy was forced to sleep in the bathroom since March. He could only come out when he was cleaning. The children were forced to sit in ice-cold baths for hours and hours."\nCorrigan, her roommate, Edee Mowrer, 36, and Julie M. Watson, 27, were arrested Sunday and then released, but prosecutors filed the Class C felony counts Wednesday. Brizzi said the state would seek to hold the women in jail or on bonds ranging from $7,500 to $15,000. They remained at large Thursday, Brizzi spokesman Roger Rayl said.\nCorrigan formerly worked as a house parent at the former Baptist Children's Home in Kouts, about 25 miles southeast of Gary in northern Indiana, The Indianapolis Star reported Wednesday.\n"It is the view of the Baptist Children's Home that any person who believes that prolonged confinement of a child and/or withholding food and clothing from a child as appropriate discipline should be in counseling and should have children removed from his or her care," the home's president, Jim Geurink, said.\nThe Kouts home closed about two years ago, and its operations were moved to Indianapolis' southeast side. It is licensed and a member of the Indiana Association of Residential Child Care Agencies, a trade association of children and family services, said Cathy Graham, director of the group.\nMary Corrigan and her estranged husband, David Corrigan, were licensed foster care parents from June 2000 until June 2002, when they decided not to renew their licenses, said Scott MacGregor, a spokesman for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.\nRecords show the couple filed for divorce in December 2002, but the case was dismissed on Aug. 14. David Corrigan was not living with his wife when authorities last weekend went to her home, also on Indianapolis' southeast side, on a neighbor's complaint of noises coming from the bathroom. The children were taken into protective custody.\nAn affidavit said the oldest child, the 10-year-old boy, was hospitalized for malnutrition. He has two sisters ages 8 and 6.