A fund to help the Comer children has been established at WestSide Bank in Hiram.
The news that Mitch Comer told police he was held captive for years in his parents’ Paulding County home confirmed relatives’ nagging fears.
Disquieting signs were there, Mitch’s grandmother and an aunt say: the way Mitch’s stepfather, Paul Comer, discouraged visitors from coming to his house; the time Mitch told his aunt he wasn’t allowed outside; the video of Mitch the same aunt found on his parents’ camera, showing the then 8-year-old boy playing in the bathtub; the way the family moved every year or so, often changing mobile phone numbers and eventually severing all contact with relatives.
“The boy, Mitch, he was isolated,” said Mary Ellen Powell, the younger sister of Mitch’s mother, Sheila Comer.
Paul and Sheila Comer remain at a Paulding County jail on charges they kept the boy, now 18, locked away in their home for several years. Paul Comer’s attorney, W. Scott Smith, said Friday his client is cooperating with authorities and intends to plead not guilty.
Sheila Comer’s attorney, Renee Rockwell, said her client, too, maintains her innocence. Rockwell said there is much yet to be learned about what really happened in the Comer home. Sheila Comer has not had contact with her husband since their arrest, she said.
“I can tell you there is going to be [more information] that is going to come out,” Rockwell said. “The rest of the story.”
The Comers are scheduled to appear in court in October to face six counts of child abuse and one count of false imprisonment.
Local, state and federal investigators spent nearly three hours searching their Dallas home Friday evening before leaving with several brown bags of evidence. Cpl. Ashley Henson with the Paulding County Sheriff’s Office said he could not discuss the specifics of what was found, but the findings will help further the investigation.
“We have corroborated some of the stories Mitch has told us,” Henson said shortly before 8 p.m., as the search concluded. “We have every reason to believe that what Mitch told us was accurate.”
Investigators believe Mitch was being held in a bedroom in the home. Specific details about the room were not released, but Henson said the window was not painted and there weren’t additional locks on the door. Still, investigators have not ruled out whether the room was altered once Paul Comer allegedly left the home with Mitch on Sept. 8.
Mitch, who returned to Georgia Thursday, asked police for a pair of glasses, explaining that his previous pair had been taken from him years before, Henson said. Mitch is staying with a private family while his two sisters, ages 11 and 13, are in state custody.
While additional charges are expected, it will likely be next week before those charges are added, Henson said.
Meanwhile, family members grapple with what they suspected and what they’ve learned.
“He [Paul] definitely treated the boy differently than the girls,” said Powell, who visited the Comers in Arizona about a decade ago. “He couldn’t go outside and play. He couldn’t go and hang out with the neighbor boys.”
But she said that, while what she saw and heard bothered her, it didn’t seem like enough to report her family to authorities.
“It didn’t seem like he was harmed or being touched or molested, but it definitely made you think in the back of your mind, ‘What if?’” said Powell, who was just a teenager when she visited. “I really didn’t have much to go on.”
Mitch, just 5 feet 3 inches and 87 pounds, was discovered last week in a Los Angeles bus station by a security officer who thought the teen looked too young and frail to be alone. Mitch told the officer his stepfather had put him on a bus in Mississippi on his 18th birthday with $200 and a list of homeless shelters.
Mitch’s younger sisters told authorities they hadn’t seen their brother in two years. Neighbors in Dallas say they didn’t know the family had a son. The last record of Mitch’s being enrolled in school appears to be in Cherokee County in 2009.
Regardless of whether the allegations against the Comers prove to be true or not, Kathryn Seifert, an expert in child abuse, family violence and trauma, said that abusers often isolate other family members.
“A very controlling, abusive male who cuts off all contact of the wife and the children from other family members and moves frequently … is a person who does not want to be discovered,” said Seifert, who has worked with child abuse victims and perpetrators for more than three decades. “Somewhere within them, they understand that what they are doing is wrong, and if they get caught, they are going to jail.”
The frequent moves, the children not being enrolled in school, the boy never being seen — all would have worked to conceal any mistreatment of Mitch or his sisters, she said. It’s even possible, she said, that the Comers sent Mitch to Los Angeles thinking he would likely disappear in a sea of young castaways.
“How do you avoid detection?” she said. “You send him to California where nobody can make that connection.”
Little is yet known about Paul Comer, whose relatives have not been reached for comment. Comer, 48, apparently supports his family as an appliance repairman. Online reviews of an appliance repair company registered to a Paul Comer in Indiana some years ago reflect a man who customers say was prompt, efficient and fair. Paul and Sheila Comer lived in Greenfield, Ind., at the time of the reviews, found on Angie’s List.
Neither Paul nor Sheila Comer, 39, have a known criminal history, though they both have had financial problems such as bankruptcies, according to public records.
Paul Comer was also involved in a traffic accident in East Cobb in 2010. The woman he rear-ended, who subsequently sued him to recover damages for her injuries, said what she remembers best about the incident are Comer’s white panel van and his desire not to alert police to the accident.
“He didn’t want to get anybody involved. He just wanted to exchange information,” recalled Lisa Salazar, who ultimately settled with Comer out of court.
— Staff writer Alexis Stevens and Channel 2 Actions News reporter Aaron Diamant contributed to this report.
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