Social workers recall finding teen girl who was kept locked in shed

A social worker fought back tears Tuesday as she testified to the state in which she found a 15-year-old girl living in Taylor County, Ga., on May 25, 2012.

Testifying in the child cruelty trial of Diana Franklin, Natrious Jackson said she got a creepy feeling as soon as she and a coworker drove up to Franklin’s 783 Old Wire Road home and saw a cinderblock building with a padlock on the door.

It gave her an eerie feeling because they were there to investigate a tip that a girl was being confined in a locked shed, she said. “I was very uncomfortable,” she testified, adding she felt like horror movie music was playing in her head.

“The hair was standing up on my arm,” she said. “I instantly put my car in reverse.”

She and Sekema Harmon, both working for the Georgia Department of Family and Children Services commonly called DFCS, left the property, parked on the road and called for a Taylor County deputy to accompany them, she said.

When they returned in 15 or 20 minutes with Deputy John Sawyer III, they found the shed unlocked and the doors open, and they saw the girl walking behind it with a white bowl. The bowl turned out to be the chamber pot in which the girl relieved herself while locked in the shed, she said.

Franklin was outside with the teen, and was not happy to hear why they were there, Jackson said.

“She was very irate, very oppositional…. She was just being very belligerent,” Jackson said. They had to threaten to call a judge before Franklin would let Harmon question the girl alone, she said.

When Harmon took the girl into the shed to question her, Franklin tried to get close enough to overhear, Jackson said.

Jackson said she told Franklin they were concerned the girl had been locked in a shed with no air conditioning on a blistering hot day, and that propane, pesticides and other flammable chemicals were stored in the same building.

“She stated that she didn’t see anything wrong with that,” Jackson said.

Inside the shed, they found the girl’s chamber pot and a wastebasket containing used menstrual products and tissues soiled with human waste, she said. The girl’s room had a concrete floor, a single twin-sized bed, a work table and a bench for lifting weights. The room had a window and a fan that wasn’t running, and no air stirred to relieve the stifling heat, she said.

The temperature was in the 90s outside, and worse inside the shed, she said: “It was hotter in there, and it reeked of fumes.”

She said it was about 4 p.m., and Franklin told them the girl had not eaten since 9 a.m. the previous day, and Franklin saw nothing wrong with that because she had not eaten since then, either: “She was defensive, very confrontational…. She didn’t see anything wrong with the way she’d treated the child.”

Jackson described the girl as thin, flushed from the heat, and wearing a T-shirt and shorts too big for her.

Harmon gave a similar description Tuesday: “The child was very thin, frail,” she said, adding the girl looked frightened.

Harmon said Franklin told them the family didn’t have room for the girl in the two-bedroom house she and her husband shared with their sons. The girl had slept in the parents’ room before they moved her outside for privacy, Harmon said.

She said the girl told her of being locked in the shed for up to two weeks at a time, of being compelled to haul rocks from one place on the property to another, and of having her hair cut off as punishment for misbehavior.

The DFCS workers decided to take the girl from Franklin’s custody immediately. When the girl got into their car, she expressed relief at having been rescued, Harmon said: “She said, ‘Thank you for saving my life,’ and ‘What took you so long?’”

Jackson recalled that the girl seemed famished, and gobbled down the snacks and drink they bought her afterward.

She said DFCS later arranged two meetings with Franklin, her husband Samuel Franklin and the girl. Diana Franklin was unhappy when the girl arrived at the first meeting wearing a sun dress, high heels and makeup. The Franklins cut the second meeting short, saying they needed to leave to buy animal feed, Jackson said. The girl no longer wanted to see them after that, she said.

Also testifying Tuesday was Sawyer, the deputy, who reiterated what the social workers said, saying Diana Franklin saw nothing wrong with locking the girl up and withholding food: “She didn’t see any problem with it. It was a form of punishment.”

Under cross-examination by defense attorney Kevin Bradley, Sawyer admitted he saw no signs the girl was suffering from heat exhaustion, but said, “She didn’t look her best.”

While questioning Jackson, Bradley asked whether it was common for people to store pesticides and other chemicals in a shed outside. “But they don’t keep kids out there with it,” Jackson replied.

Bradley asked whether it was common for parents to confine a child to a room as punishment.

“A bedroom, not a garage,” Jackson answered.

Bradley in his opening statement Tuesday said Diana and Samuel Franklin were rearing the girl according to their deeply held religious faith, and had a difficult time with the child, who had suffered neglect from her birth parents.

The girl would have violent outbursts, break dishes, steal, lie, hoard food and gorge on it, Bailey said, so confining her to a room and restricting her access to food were reasonable measures.

He said the Franklins had raised three sons, today ages 24, 22 and 20, but Diana Franklin wanted a daughter, so they adopted the girl.

Prosecutor Peter Hoffman in his opening statement said the Franklins adopted the girl at age 7. In the years to follow, she was confined not just in the shed, but in a closet, an outhouse and a chicken coop. She was tied up and lashed and forced to wear a collar commonly used to train dogs, with a remote control transmitter that triggers a shock to electrodes on the collar.

At one point Diana Franklin even put a pistol to the girl’s head, Hoffman said.

Denied food, the girl had to forage through compost to get enough to eat, he said.

“This case is about the theft of childhood,” Hoffman told jurors. “Her childhood was stolen from her.”

Authorities investigating the case also arrested Samuel Franklin, but he has been indicted separately and is not on trial this week.

Diana Franklin faces 19 counts of child cruelty, eight counts of false imprisonment and one of aggravated assault.

Her trial resumes this morning in the Taylor County courthouse in Butler.

This story was originally published November 10, 2015 at 6:17 PM with the headline "Social workers recall finding teen girl who was kept locked in shed."