Authorities said the care dependent children were unbathed, lived in home littered with human waste and fly-infested
NORRISTOWN — “Guilty as charged,” a jury foreman emphatically declared as a Norristown couple was convicted of neglect for sending their autistic children to school unkempt and unbathed — dried feces under their fingernails and toenails — and for allowing them to live in “deplorable” conditions, including a home that was littered with human waste and fly-infested.
Michael and Bonnie Ann Gensiak, who lived on the 200 block of East Jacoby Street, showed no emotion as the Montgomery County Court jury convicted each of them of charges of neglect of a care-dependent person, endangering the welfare of children, and conspiracy in connection with their treatment of the two children between April and September 2024.
The children, a girl, 18, and a boy, 16, are intellectually disabled, low-functioning, non-verbal, and require assistance with daily activities, including bathing, dressing, using the bathroom, communicating, and cannot be left on their own or unsupervised, according to testimony.
The siblings attended Fairwold Academy, a private school that serves students with emotional, intellectual and behavioral challenges, and the investigation began when alarmed school officials and social workers reported the children were showing up at school “in complete unsanitary conditions, including being covered in feces, unkempt, having odors and being uncared for,” according to court papers.
When police, social workers and child protective services officials entered the Gensiak apartment, they found the children had been sleeping on mattresses soiled with urine and feces and walking on floors and carpets “wet with ground-in stains and debris, likely feces, which was not cleaned up,” according to court documents.
“If this case isn’t neglect, where do we draw the line?” Assistant District Attorney Bradley Walter Deckel argued to the jury during his closing statement, asking jurors to speak for the children who could not speak for themselves with a verdict that gives them justice.
The jury of eight men and four women deliberated for less than an hour before reaching the verdict after listening to two days of testimony.
Judge Steven T. O’Neill, who presided over the trial, deferred sentencing the couple so that court officials can complete a background investigation report about the pair, who will undergo mental health evaluations. The couple will remain free on bail pending sentencing.
Michael, 62, and Bonnie, 57, face sentences that could range from probation to several months in jail under state sentencing guidelines.
Deckel was pleased with the verdict.
“This is a case where there’s two young people, throughout their lives, were not being treated by their parents with appropriate care. They were being neglected, living in deplorable conditions, waking up and going to bed next to their own feces because their parents were not caring for them,” Deckel said.
“The defendants failed their children. These parents neglected their responsibilities and their duty to those children, resulting in them living in deplorable conditions,” Deckel added.
During the trial, defense lawyers Francis Genovese, who represented Bonnie, and Matthew Quigg, who represented Michael, argued the parents were doing the best they could under the most difficult circumstances and that prosecutors did not present sufficient evidence that they intended to cause harm to the children.
“Michael Gensiak is floored by this verdict. At every turn, he acted with love for both of his children and tried to do the best that he could,” said Quigg, who argued at trial that the parents were in “quicksand and in over their heads” trying to care for their children with limited financial means. “It just becomes a vicious cycle.”
Genovese argued there was reasonable doubt in the case and that the conduct did not rise to the level of a crime. Genovese argued there was no evidence the couple had an agreement to neglect or endanger the children.
“It’s a tragic result all around; there are no winners here. These people spent 18 years of their lives putting everything that they could, that they had the means and the capacity to put into raising their kids, and to now hear that a jury has found them guilty of neglecting their kids or endangering their kids is just unbelievable to Bonnie and to Michael,” Genovese reacted to the verdict.
Testimony revealed the couple was of limited means, living off Social Security and Michael’s veteran’s benefits and in subsidized housing. Defense lawyers suggested authorities overreached with the charges, that the parents were trying their best while living in poverty.
Deckel responded, “It is not a crime to be poor, to live in poverty, to be on disability. But it is a crime not to take care of your children.”
School staff members testified that the children showed up at school regularly with poor hygiene and “intense” odor, wearing “dirty, odorous and urine-soaked clothing, sometimes so bad that they have to be showered at school and their clothing washed and replaced by staff.”
Some staffers were noticeably emotional as they described the plight of the children and said they had never witnessed that level of neglect.
Jurors viewed photographs that depicted the children in their soiled clothing and others that showed the dried feces under their fingernails and toenails.
School officials reported trying to address the hygiene concerns with the Gensiaks and that their concerns went unanswered or unaddressed.
When child social service workers showed up at the Gensiak residence, the parents denied accusations of abuse or neglect and refused to let them enter the apartment and refused free services to help them care for the children, according to testimony.
“They were offered help. They didn’t take it. They made a choice not to be bothered. Over and over again, these defendants chose to refuse help and allow their children to live in squalor. These two beautiful, young people deserved better,” Deckel argued.
Officials subsequently obtained a court order to enter the apartment and on Sept 18, 2024, Norristown police conducted a safety check. Officials noticed a strong odor of a mix of urine, sewage and old food as they entered and “flies immediately began flying out of the open door,” Norristown Detective Dana Ganard alleged in the arrest affidavit.
The odor was so overpowering that officials had to wear face masks and testimony revealed some reported the odors penetrated their own clothes to the point they burned them after being in the apartment.
“The apartment had fly tape hanging from the ceiling in the living room, which was completely covered in flies as well and dead flies and bugs on the windowsills,” Ganard alleged. “Throughout the house, flies were all over in each room and the apartment was completely unsanitary and in complete disarray.”
Rotting food was discovered in the kitchen and the bathroom floor “had puddles of what appeared to be urine and feces, bugs and other unknown materials covering the surfaces,” a tub that appeared to be unused and a broken sink, according to the arrest affidavit.
Inside the boy’s bedroom, authorities found a mattress stained with feces and urine and feces on the ceiling and wall. A mattress in the girl’s bedroom “had severe staining and saturation on the mattress itself, which appears to have also been from human excrement,” Ganard alleged.
The children were subsequently removed from the home and are now in foster care.
Montgomery County Detectives assisted with the investigation.