TAYLOR - The Scranton Counseling Center made multiple calls to a Taylor woman accused of starving her mentally disabled son to death, but she never responded to offers of help, according to phone records obtained by prosecutors through a court order.
Meanwhile, a relative said Susan Gensiak "didn't like her male children," and that her first son died unexpectedly when he was 29.
Robert Gensiak, who had Down syndrome, was 32 when he died March 20, a day after he was taken from his 12 Williams St. home by ambulance to Regional Hospital of Scranton at the urging of his doctor, Paul Remick, D.O., who had not examined Gensiak for two years. His body temperature was 92 degrees. He was scourged by untreated scabies, lice and psoriasis, and weighed just 69 pounds, police said. Lackawanna County Coroner Tim Rowland ruled the death a homicide due to neglect.
Susan Gensiak, 59, and Gensiak's sisters, Joan, 35, and Rebekah, 24, were charged Wednesday with third-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and neglect of care for a dependent person. Joan Gensiak, whose 2-year-old daughter was placed with Lackawanna County's Children and Youth Services, was also charged with endangering the welfare of a child. Unable to post bail, the trio are in Lackawanna County Prison.
Prosecutors say the motive for the neglect was Gensiak's Social Security Disability checks, the family's main source of income.
The Scranton Counseling Center phone records are significant, because they apparently contradict Susan Gensiak's claim that she wanted to get her son help, but couldn't because she didn't have a car or other transportation.
"As far as I know, they (Scranton Counseling Center) were trying to communicate with the mother, and she wasn't responding," Assistant District Attorney Suzanne Tierney said Thursday. "She wasn't calling them back."
The records document "numerous instances" of the center's calls offering help between 2009 and 2010 that were ignored, Tierney said.
Before moving to Taylor in April 2012, the family lived at multiple Scranton addresses, Tierney said. A witness told investigators the family was evicted from one of the homes over filthy living conditions. Susan Gensiak also pulled her son, Robert, out of the Allentown School district after the fifth grade to home-school him, Tierney said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a relative said the abuse stretches back to at least the mid-2000s, when she lost contact with the family.
Susan Gensiak doted on her daughters, but did not love her sons, who were "not allowed to eat."
"She wanted girls. She didn't want boys," the relative said.
Joseph Gensiak Sr., who died in 2010, would sneak food to his boys, Robert and Joseph Jr., the relative said.
"I would sneak them food," she said. "Everyone would try and sneak them food."
Joseph Gensiak Jr. died Oct. 24, 2005, according to a brief obituary in The Times-Tribune. He was 29.
No obituary was published for Robert Gensiak.