‘It tore me apart’: Bucks County neighbors describe shock after seven children removed from decrepit conditions

As the workday came to a close in West Rockhill Township, Bucks County, on a recent day, pickup trucks rolled out of rush-hour traffic and into the Green Top Mobile Park.

Narrow roadways led to the driveway of the Robertson home, a faded rancher that sat eerily quiet at the end of Roseann Lane.

Jerry Beers, a longtime Green Top resident, said he’d often see the Robertson children playing outside on a rope swing. Sometimes, Beers said, he’d offer them an icy popsicle or watermelon when it was hot outside.

But as the Robertsons settled into Green Top in the early days of the pandemic, Beers began to notice that the children — seven in all —

looked underweight, and he never saw them waiting for the bus that took other neighborhood children to school each morning. One particularly cold evening, Beers said, he saw one of the young Robertson boys outside wearing only a diaper.

Last month, the children’s parents, Shane and Crystal Robertson, were arrested and charged with child endangerment and related crimes after authorities found the children living in squalor — uneducated, malnourished, and sharing the filthy, crumbling family home with a bevy of more the two dozen pets.

One of the detectives in the case later showed Beers a photo of the horrendous conditions inside the family’s home. Feces were strewn cross the floor, waste from some of the 26 animals — including pet rats, dogs, cats, rabbits, and a four-foot lizard. Holes littered the walls, and the floors — so damaged that Crystal Robertson once fell through — were dotted with garbage. The refrigerator, police said, was padlocked shut.

“It tore me apart,” Beers said.

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The children, who ranged in age from 4 to 16, were suffering from myriad health issues, police said — one child had a “dire” infestation of maggots in her hair, another had ringworm.

Two of the children told police the family had no money, and authorities say the kids roamed the neighborhood and stole from an abandoned property nearby to feed and care for the family pets. The children themselves barely had any food, police said.Crystal Robertson described her children to investigators as “garbage disposals with legs.”

The Robertson kids didn’t go to school, authorities said, and some of then didn’t even know their own birthdays.

The Robertsons face seven felony counts of endangering the welfare of children — one charge for each child. They were held briefly in Bucks County jail on $10,000 bail before each being released for $1,000.

Efforts to reach the Robertsons were unsuccessful. No lawyers for them were listed in court documents.

The children were placed in foster care after being medically evaluated at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. And the gaggle of animals removed from the home are being evaluated and cared for by the Bucks County SPCA.

Social media offered a brief glimpse into the Robertsons’ life on Roseann Lane.

Crystal Robertson created a TikTok page devoted to the family’s lizard, a red Tegu named Boudin. That account, which had more than 1,000 followers, has since been made private.

The case drew national attention as questions arose over how such neglect went unnoticed in the quiet Bucks County community.

Prosecutors, meanwhile, have begun to build their case against the Robertsons before they appear in court in August for a preliminary hearing. Deputy District Attorney Brittney Kern, who is prosecuting the case, said the county was primarily focused on the children’s recovery in the meantime.

“We want the community to know that we’re going to prosecute crimes that are committed against children very seriously,” Kern said. “We want to make sure all the children in our community are safe.”

If convicted, Shane Robertson, 47, and Crystal Robertson, 37, face up to seven years in jail for each charge. If convicted, Kern said a judge could choose whether those sentences overlap or run consecutively, meaning more time would be served.

Details are emerging about the couple, who lived in New Castle, Del., until being evicted from a rental home there in 2019.

Court documents obtained by The Inquirer show a lengthy dispute between Shane Robertson and his New Castle landlord that began late in 2018 over nearly $6,000 in rent that had gone unpaid for half a year.

A Delaware court ruled in favor of the landlord and ordered Robertson to pay. An attempt to garnish wages from his then-employer, a nearby Amazon warehouse, failed because Robertson’s wages didn’t meet court requirements for that.

The court filed its eviction notice that January.

The Robertsons have lived in the West Rockhill Township home for the last 18 months to two years, authorities say. Property records show that the home is owned by Crystal’s parents. Efforts to reach them were unsuccessful.

Neighbors, meanwhile, say they were stunned to learn about the conditions in which the family had been living.

Jim Finnen, a longtime FedEx delivery driver, said he’d delivered packages to the home for over a decade.

After the Robertsons arrived, he said he’d make three or four deliveries a month. During each visit, he said, he’d noticed the absence of the usual signs of a suburban family home — a swing set, toys in the yard, a kiddie pool. And he noted the home’s faded exterior and neglected lawn.

Many of the packages he delivered, he said, were from Chewy, an online retailer for pet food and products. He was surprised to learn the children were undernourished, and worries for their recovery.

“It’s one thing to have the psychological trauma, but the lack of education, that’s gonna set them back,” Finnen said.

Beers, the neighbor who lives across the street and who is a grandfather of young children, wonders what he could have done differently on the days he offered the Robertson kids a neighborly snack.

“I just feel so bad for the kids,” he said. “If I knew they were starving, I would have made them sandwiches.”