The smiles of the carefully groomed boys gleamed as they posed for school pictures.
Austin Bryant
Dylan Bryant and Austin Eugene Bryant appeared to be well-cared for. Their hair was meticulously combed. Austin looked a bit bookish with his wire-rimmed glasses. By all appearances these children were loved.
“You couldn’t have asked for better people,” Mary Hider, the biological mother of the boys, said of her kids’ adoptive parents. They also adopted her youngest boy, David, when he was about 15 months old.
Hider held that opinion for 12 years, until she learned at least one of her sons had been kept in a locked footlocker. He had been tortured, handcuffed and Tasered. By then Dylan and Austin were missing.
The Bryants initially put on a good front, pretending to be the ideal parents. Over the course of a decade, the couple would adopt nine foster children. They had one child of their own. Their lives revolved around their kids.
But the school images falsely portrayed what was really happening to them.
Hider said she wished she could have kept her sons and raised them herself, but she realized why she couldn’t keep them.
Mary Hider with her three boys: David, top; Austin, left and Dylan, right
Between the ages of 7 and 14, Hider was repeatedly molested. A doctor later diagnosed her with severe depression, bipolar disorder and post traumatic stress syndrome, she said. She was on medications that made her sleep through the day.