At the June 6 sentencing, social worker Crystal Williams told the court that Ness Hopkins had lost parental rights to all but the youngest child, now 3 years old. That child currently lives with a relative.
The other four boys are all in foster care with adoptions pending.
There are behavior problems with those boys, said Williams. She told the court one of the boys recently tried to choke his teacher and also tried to kill the family dog.
“He said he knew what death is and wanted the dog to die,” she told the court. “Another of the boys has severe anger issues.”
She said he puts his hands on his brothers and on other children and destroys property belonging to other children.
Defense attorney Tucker Watson put his client on the witness stand.
She said she put the tops on the cribs of the two and three year old so she could sleep at night without worrying they could get out and be injured or killed. She said one got out and was playing with a can of Drano, a household cleaning product.
She did not address the filthy conditions or that the children were covered with lice and flea bites and diapers that had not been changed.
A psychiatrist with the community services board testified Ness-Hopkins had been receiving treatment and counseling and was receiving medications for mental illness.
He said her mental problems brought on by childhood sexual abuse were exacerbated by the sudden death of the father of the children.
She said the youngest has not yet been diagnosed but all four of the others, now ages 4 to 8, suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and have been diagnosed with symptoms related to trauma and severe anxiety.
At a preliminary hearing in 2017, Accomack County Social Services worker Kate Bonniwell testified she visited Ness-Hopkins’ home July 28, 2017, after a complaint was made to her agency.
In the bedroom where the three younger children slept, she found the 2- and 3-year children in separate cribs with tops that were affixed with multiple screws. She said the tops appeared to be made from the side rails of other cribs, making them into cages.
Another crib with a 1-year-old child in it had no top.
Bonniwell said it took her almost half an hour with an electric screwdriver to remove one of the lids. As she was working on it, she said the 2-year-old child was hissing at her and making noises she described “as animal sounds.”
When she finally released the lid, the child just lay still and did not attempt to get up. Next, she began unscrewing the lid from the crib where the three-year-old was confined.
One of the screws was stripped, she said and she had to go downstairs to get another screwdriver.
“The children didn’t act like normal chlidren,” she said at the preliminary hearing.
Bonniwell described the children as “filthy, with multiple bug bites." They were infested with lice, she told the court.
In another bedroom, social workers found the 5- and 6-year-old children lying on mattresses on the floor. They were filthy, with no sheet and no pillow, just a bare mattress.