A 37-year-old Nevada mother faces charges after police said her 1-year-old died in a filthy home without running water and another child was locked in a room for more than a year, according to reports.
A grand jury indicted Philena Dees last week on seven counts of child abuse, neglect, or endangerment, records showed.
A 15-year-old child told the grand jury that they moved into the home with their mother and two siblings in 2019. The home is located in the south valley near Cactus Avenue and Decatur Boulevard. A boy, Aurelius Dees, was born at the home in December 2021, documents said.
The teenager told investigators his two younger siblings had never seen a doctor. The younger children, including the deceased baby, did not have birth certificates.
The teenager described the house as “not clean,” saying it was covered in food and mold, transcripts said.
“I attempted myself to clean the house by spraying bacterial spray, Tide sprays and things like that, Clorox wipes, but the house was filthy, unsanitary,” the child said about the house. “There was rotting food everywhere. There was mold growing in corners. It was bad.”
One day, Dees came home with a box of nearly rotten sweet potatoes, the child said, instructing the teenager to wash each one. The teenager estimated the food sat in the sink for one or two months.
“The household was disheveled with random garbage, food and clothes thrown about,” police said in a report. “Every toilet in the residence was filled with decal matter that emanated profoundly due to them not being able to flush.”
Aurelius Dees was 1 year old when he died in May, though police said he “appeared to have been deceased for some time,” documents said. Investigators described the child as “small and emaciated.” The Clark County coroner’s office said his cause and manner of death were pending as of Tuesday.
The 15-year-old told the grand jury Philena Dees “would “go on tangents and ramble about the government,” transcripts said.
“Anything involved with government agencies or systems or society she believes is unnecessary,” the teenager told the grand jury, according to transcripts. “So, it’s her opinion of everybody in this room who is working in society and has a job and is living a normal sustained life, she thinks that that’s a bad thing for some reason I don’t know of.”
The teenager also told the grand jury that their mother suspected a man she knew had sexually assaulted their sibling, an 8-year-old child in the home, documents said. The teenager told the grand jury Philena Dees did not report the alleged incidents to police.
Philena Dees then allegedly “removed the doorknob” of the child’s bedroom and “replaced it with a doorknob that had a lock on the outside of the room to keep her locked in the room,” documents said.
The child was “locked in her bedroom” for nearly a year, documents said, starting when she was 7. The now-8-year-old was allowed to use the bathroom, but food was delivered to her room while she was locked inside, the teenager told the grand jury.
“The only time she could ask is when I would use the bathroom and she would knock on the door and ask me if I could ask Philena if she could have something,” the teenager told the grand jury.
The teenager told police they had not been to school since seventh grade. The teenager should have attended tenth grade the last year, they told the grand jury.
The teenager also told the grand jury Philena would leave the home for one or two days at a time to travel to see art, documents said. The teenager was then responsible for the three siblings.
“So how would you know Mom was gone to wherever she was going?” a prosecutor asked the teenager during the proceeding.
“It’s simple. I would walk into the office, and she wasn’t there,” the teenager said. “And the baby, she doesn’t like being around the baby so it’s pretty much I’d just check if the office is empty and then if it’s empty she’s not home.”
Philena Dees reportedly left for a trip on Friday, April 28, the teenager told the grand jury. At the time, the home did not have running water for one or two months, the teenager said, and the toilets did not function. Around this time, the one-year-old started to act differently and “didn’t make any noise,” the 15-year-old said.
The house had no air conditioning as Philena Dees allegedly told the teenager that the system required water to work, documents said. The temperature in the house at the time of the baby’s death was 90 degrees, documents said.
On May 1, Philena Dees had not returned home, and the teenager thought about calling police or Child Protective Services, documents said. The teenager then discovered the baby deceased.
CPS took the children into their custody that same day, documents said. Philena returned from Arizona the next day, documents said.
Philena told investigators she never registered with the school district to home-school her children, documents said. She also told investigators she had instructed the 15-year-old on how to care for the three children in her absence.
“She stated that she was going to Arizona, flying there hoping to sell some artwork, receiving money, using that money to buy a return ticket back then pay for the water bill and other bills that she needed to pay for,” a Metro detective told the grand jury. “That didn’t work out so she decided to go to another art gallery which would have kept her there a few more days since it hadn’t opened, and eventually if she had made the money then she would hope to use that money to fly back.”
She told police she allowed “a sex assault offender around her children” because he “was paying the bills,” documents said. Philena reportedly also told police she locked the 8-year-old in her room for her safety.
Dees has pleaded not guilty. A trial was scheduled for August. She remained jailed at the Clark County Detention Center on Tuesday on $150,000 bail.
The children were living with another family member out of state, documents said.
CPS had two prior interactions with the family in February 2020 and April 2021, records showed. The referrals were “coded ‘information only,’” according to CPS records. The teenager’s April 30 call “alleging abuse and neglect” is also noted. That case is listed as open.
Tell us your thoughts...