“I understand that Cynthia is the actor, you are the non-actor,” she told Dominique Moore, 47, on Thursday. “But which is worse?”

It was May 10, 2022, that Montgomery County’s 911 centre received a call about an unresponsive child inside the townhouse. Medics and police arrived to find an emaciated 17-year-old on the ground in a room filled with younger children. They could never revive Morgan Moore.

Investigators were soon building a murder case against the couple for not taking Morgan to a doctor as he grew more sick, and cases of child neglect for the six other minor children – ages 4 to 14 – who lived there.

They learned the children had not gone to school in years because Cynthia Moore was able to fool the Montgomery County school system into thinking she was adequately home-schooling her children, according to testimony from her trial. The truth was something else.

“They didn’t have knowledge of basic arithmetic, reading comprehension, socialisation,” Assistant State’s Attorney Lauren Fetsch said in court on Thursday.

Cynthia Moore had convinced her children the world outside wasn’t safe.

“They were told time and time again that if they go out into the world, they could be abused – sexually, physically – or killed,” Fetsch said. “They didn’t have the opportunity for the whole beginning of their life to be a part of the real world.”

Instead they grew up hungry in a home covered with cat and dog faeces. The children bathed so infrequently that at least two of them became scared of water. And they watched their brother fade away. “From walking to using crutches to using a wheelchair to immobility,” Fetsch said. “They watched as he could no longer eat. And they were forced to watch him die.”

Authorities have long said Cynthia Moore largely stayed inside the home and controlled it. Dominic Moore ventured outside, holding jobs at grocery stores, a pizza place and a delivery company, according to court proceedings.

‘Smart’ kids

After their children were finally discovered, the six youngest were placed in foster homes – in pairs. They stayed close with each other and their three older siblings, who were adults at the time of Morgan’s death. They learned basic hygiene skills, started going to school and made friends outside their home for the first time. Several testified at Cynthia Moore’s trial, delivering heartbreaking accounts of suffering and perseverance.

“These are good kids,” Fetsch said. “They are polite. They are smart.”

Cynthia Moore went to trial last northern autumn. She was acquitted of murder because, as Cummins said at the time, prosecutors could never establish a definitive cause of Morgan’s death – something made challenging by a dearth of medical records for the child. She was convicted on six negligence charges.

“Ms Moore,” Judge Cummins told her when she handed down her sentence, “what you did to these children is you made the world much crueller for them.”

In November, Dominique Moore pleaded guilty on six charges of neglect, saying he wanted to accept responsibility and spare his children from having to testify again at a trial. That set up Thursday’s sentencing hearing.

‘Better if Mommy was kept happy’

Two of his adult children spoke. A third submitted a written statement, which was read aloud by Christopher Quasebarth, her lawyer from the Maryland Crime Victims’ Resource Centre. The statement addressed Moore.

“I hope that he gets now that we needed him not to be afraid to tell anyone about what Morgan and the little ones were going through,” Quasebarth said. “The little ones needed help, and us too.”

The statement offered some explanation of why her dad stayed quiet: “He believed that we’d be better if Mommy was kept happy. It wouldn’t be as bad in the house if she was happy or in a good mood. If she was upset, we would all feel it.”

Another daughter, now 24, shook as she took a seat before Cummins, who greeted her warmly after having watched her testify earlier. The daughter recalled that as one of the older children, there was a time she left home for school.

“My dad is my best friend,” she said, choking up. “He used to stick up for me and teach me how to stand up for myself in kindergarten. He would always carry me on his shoulders and talk to me about things.”

Plea for mercy

Her dad encouraged her later too. “He tried his best to talk to us when we were sad,” the daughter said as her dad wiped his eyes. “He’d come in our room and try to motivate us and be like, ‘You are smart. You are beautiful. You will be something. We’re not always going to be poor. We’re not going to always be in this situation’.”

Her 22-year-old sister also spoke. “I just hope that you can show my dad some mercy,” she told Cummins. “I think that he’s trying to change as a person.”

Dominique Moore, who had been held in jail since his arrest in 2023, then spoke, apologising to his daughters in court. He told Cummins things were once normal in their family. “Something snapped inside my wife and it changed everything,” he said.

He said he tried to be the best father he could, struggled with alcohol and worried that if he crossed his wife, she would invent stories that he abused their children and he would never see them again. Moore saw his role in the home as a “counterbalance” to his wife. He read aloud sweet letters received in jail from two of his younger children.

At times, his voice grew loud with passion. “The only thing that’s keeping me going is just a hope and prayer that I’d be able to be back with my children, will get a chance to be a father,” he said.

Cummins had the last word. “I hear all of the love that your children have for you – do not doubt that,” she told him.

She lauded Moore for what he had completed since being locked up: training programmes, life-skills programmes, getting his GED [high school certificate]. “I do not think that you’re a man who needs to be separated from your children permanently,” Cummins said.

Then she cited the way he had just spoken and said he could have stood up to his wife with the same passion and force. “That’s the Dominic Moore that they needed in their lives,” Cummins said.

She imposed seven years in prison, even as she still didn’t know why he never called the police, never called child protective services, never acted at all. “How do you sit by and sit,” Cummins said, “and do nothing for years?”