Mary Rowles: The Closet

In the spring of 2003, Mary Rowles, 30, lived in Akron, Ohio, with her partner, Alice Jenkins, 27, and six of Rowles’s children. The children had been told to call Jenkins “Dad.” Out of sight of neighbors, the two women were abusing them. For years two of the boys had been kept shut in a small bedroom closet, fed very little and let out only rarely.

In early May 2003, three of the boys slipped out of the house through a window. They were found walking the city streets before dawn, barefoot and badly underweight, and the officers who picked them up took their story seriously and called for backup. At the house, police found the closet, its door blocked by a dresser, and removed the other children. Rowles was first charged with child endangering, and Jenkins with child endangering and felonious assault. The case later grew to dozens of counts, including kidnapping.

Both women pleaded guilty and were sentenced to 30 years in prison. Their appeals were rejected in 2015. Rowles asked for early release in 2018 and was refused. In 2019 Summit County Judge Amy Corrigall Jones turned down Jenkins’s request after four of the brothers, by then grown men, spoke against it. Reporting that year put both women’s parole eligibility in 2033.