Mom: Child welfare officials were OK with cage for toddler

POTTSVILLE, Pa. (AP) - A Pennsylvania mother whose 22-month-old son was kept in a cage by his father said Friday that local child welfare officials had previously seen the enclosure and approved of it.

Tiffany George said the makeshift wooden pen was meant to keep the toddler safe.

"They've seen the cage and had no problem with it," she said of Schuylkill County Children & Youth. "It's not that we wanted to lock our kids up and entrap them."

Lisa Stevens, the agency's executive director, declined to comment on George's claim, citing confidentiality rules. However, she said in general, a homemade cage wouldn't be considered an appropriate place for a child.

George spoke to the Associated Press two days after the biological father of two of her three children, Cecil Eugene Kutz, was arrested on child endangerment charges.

Police said Kutz left the toddler home alone with his two younger siblings Wednesday - including a newborn sister - while George was in the hospital suffering complications from childbirth.

"He never did anything like this before," George, 26, said. "I'm getting more and more angry by the day. I trusted my kids' dad to take care of our children."

George had given birth at the home Tuesday night. Kutz called an ambulance for her the next morning after she suffered heavy bleeding. Medical staff called child welfare officials, who tipped state police.

Troopers went to the home Wednesday afternoon, forced their way inside and found the newborn in a baby seat, a 1-year-old boy in a playpen and the toddler locked inside a makeshift enclosure made of plywood and wooden lattice. They arrested Kutz when he arrived 40 minutes later.

Police said Kutz told them he had left the children to visit his wife in the hospital, but George said he never showed. She said she has no idea where he went.