Mother of runaway child gets visitation

INDIANAPOLIS -- A judge on Monday granted supervised visitation rights to a mother charged with neglect after her 3-year-old son was found wandering on a busy highway last month.\nHowever, Nancy Dyer, 30, cannot see her two children until she is released from the Marion County Jail. Her freedom would cost $350 cash, which she said she cannot pay.\n"I don't have anybody who can," Dyer told Marion Superior Judge Lisa Borges.\nDyer faces four felony child-neglect charges. She was arrested Dec. 30 after stunned motorists found her son, Damon, running on Interstate 465 on the city's northwest side, wearing only a diaper and a T-shirt.\nShe was released from jail Jan. 4, but she was arrested again Jan. 16 on a new felony child neglect charge stemming from a Dec. 28 investigation prompted by reports the boy was wandering alone through the apartment complex where the family lived.\nBorges ordered Dyer to have no contact with her children after her first arrest. But a juvenile court judge handling the children's case with the Marion County Department of Child Services allowed supervised visitation.\nBorges, in changing her order, stressed that the visits must be supervised by a case worker at the department's office.\nThe children were taken into protective custody when investigators brought Damon home and found Dyer asleep and her daughter eating spaghetti off the floor. The apartment was piled with trash and had what appeared to be human waste or dirt smeared on walls, according to police reports.