to be terrible; children
placed with relatives
Authorities remove
23 dogs from home
Conditions reported
KATHY BARATTA Authorities arrested two adults and removed 23 dogs, one cat and one guinea pig from this Helen Avenue home in Howell last week. Three children were placed in the custody of relatives. to be terrible; children
placed with relatives
BY KATHY BARATTA
Staff Writer
HOWELL — It was the muzzle reinforced by duct tape around the small dog’s mouth that was more than could be tolerated by township code enforcement officer James Burdick.
Ultimately, Burdick’s report of what he first witnessed as abuse to an animal would result in three children being removed from housing conditions so awful that Howell police ended up charging the youngsters’ parents with endangering the welfare of children due to the execrable living conditions.
The township and state would join along with township code violation summonses and state animal cruelty charges being brought against Joseph and Lorayne Viteo, the children’s parents.
According to Howell municipal court administrator Dominick Pondaco, the child endangerment charges that were brought against the two adults on May 21 will be scheduled for a hearing in state Superior Court, Freehold.
The Viteos were released on bail following their arrests.
They were also charged that same day with eight counts of animal cruelty by the state Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA).
Pondaco said another 23 summonses for violations of township ordinances were issued May 24 against Lorayne Viteo, who he said also goes by the name Lorayne Thum.
Pondaco said the SPCA charges and the township summonses carried no bail and would be heard in municipal court.
Burdick said he had gone to the Viteo home at 16 Helen Avenue in the Free-wood Acres section of Howell on May 19 after contact from the Monmouth County Health Department about alleged code violations at the home.
Patrolman Bernard Fowler was among the authorities that returned to the property May 20 to effect a rescue operation. Fowler’s official report described "deplorable conditions" at the residence that was found to be home to the two adults, three children all under the age of 7, 23 bloodhound dogs, a cat and a guinea pig.
Burdick said he initially went to the home to look into a report of a possible illegal fence being installed on the property.
Burdick said when he confronted Mrs. Viteo about the muzzling of a dog she told him she was a trainer and the muzzle and reinforcement were being used to "control his barking." Burdick said he left the house but was not able to shake the image of the dog with the taped mouth. After doing some Internet research he determined that was not an accepted procedure for training dogs, as Viteo had claimed.
Burdick said the next day, May 20, he contacted animal control authorities who set in motion a process that would end up rescuing the 23 blue tick hounds and three young children from a house whose interior was covered in fecal matter with no working bathroom or kitchen, according to township officials.
Howell Land Use Officer Vito Mari-naccio said Burdick, housing inspector Patricia Hoover and Fowler are to be commended for taking immediate and appropriate action once they saw firsthand the conditions at the Helen Avenue home.
Next door to that home is the tidily kept home and yard that has been the residence since late March for Jill Trendy, her husband, Tim, and their children, ages 10, 13 and 16.
Trendy said when she and her family first moved into their new home they "weren’t too thrilled" by what they could see of their neighbors’ front yard. She said that since she had a stockade fence running down the side of the properties to the wood line — which kept the Viteos’ back yard out of sight — she figured, live and let live.
However, said Trendy, that changed when she came to realize there were always at least five or six dogs left in the Viteos’ back yard in makeshift pen areas sectioned off with what appeared to be some kind of chicken wire or temporary fencing material. She said dogs were always in the yard, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, no matter what the weather conditions were.
She said it did not take long to realize they were not always the same dogs and that there were rotations of dogs being made in the yard. However, she said, she had no idea there was a total of 23 dogs living on the property.
Trendy said that in speaking with neighbors she was told there had been several calls made to police to complain of the dogs’ constant barking since the Viteos moved in five years ago. She said she had been informed by the neighbors that, to their knowledge, no formal complaints had been issued and no official action had been taken before the May 20 raid.
Trendy said while the noise and smells were becoming annoying and unbearable, what really started getting to her was the way the animals were left outside in extreme heat with no water or food bowls. She said she called several agencies to alert officials about the conditions being endured by the animals.
She said she eventually saw some people come to the next door property, appear to make a cursory inspection and then leave with no apparent follow-up action being taken.
Trendy said she never saw anything to indicate that her neighbors’ children were being physically abused, but said she wondered about their living conditions. She said she got worried when she saw the 7-year-old playing in the back yard that was filled with excrement and overloaded with dogs.
Trendy said it was following her contact with the county health department a few weeks ago that it seemed something was finally going to be done. She said she had been informed by health department officials that a coordinated effort of the appropriate agencies was being organized in order to deal with the situation.
Trendy said it was serendipitous that the "raid" on the Viteos’ home last week by police, township, county and state officials came when it did because, she said, she was set to call the state Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) directly this week if no other action had been taken.
Following the intervention of the authorities on May 20, the children were handed over to DYFS, which placed them in the care of their grandparents who reside in Farmingdale, according to police.
Diane Losche has lived across the street from the Viteo house for six years.
"It’s a tight-knit neighborhood where everyone, for the most part, tries to keep their places nice," she said.
Losche said that since she works all day, she did not have a chance to focus too much attention on the problems that were developing on the Viteo property. She said she had called the police several times over the past three years due to the increase in the number of dogs on the property over that period of time and the level of barking that resulted.
She said she had no idea there were 23 dogs on the property, just that there were "too many." She said she counted herself lucky to be across the street where the sounds and smells were mitigated by the distance.
Ohio-based Jane Schlegel is the national coordinator for the American Blood and Tick Coonhound Club (ABTCC), an organization which is a member of the American Kennel Club. Schlegel said she is familiar with the Viteos and has been working for some time to prevent them from ever being allowed to take in foster dogs again as they have in the past.
Schlegel said it was not until an officer of the ABTCC — whose board members are nationwide — actually visited the Helen Avenue property that they became aware of the conditions the Viteos’ "foster dogs" were living in.
Schlegel said she will be working with the Popcorn Park Zoo, Lacey, where the animals were taken last week, to find permanent homes for the dogs from within the member ranks of the ABTCC.
The Viteos’ Helen Avenue home will remain sealed and considered inhabitable until such time as a cleanup of the property is completed, according to officials.
Marinaccio said the township will look into cleaning up the exterior of the property and imposing a lien on the property to recoup any expenses the township incurs with the cleanup. He said the township can only force a cleanup of the exterior of the property.