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SANDPOINT – Six children who staged a days-long standoff with authorities following their mother’s arrest on child-neglect charges will remain in a foster home indefinitely, a judge ruled Friday. 

In an hour-long closed hearing, Bonner County Magistrate Judge Debra Heise decided not to allow JoAnn McGuckin to regain custody of her six minor children. 

A gag order prevented lawyers from either side to comment on specifics from the hearing. In the past, attorneys have said JoAnn McGuckin has medical problems, and also has no income and no home to take care of the children. 

Prosecutor Phil Robinson said the outcome of the hearing was exactly what he wanted. There is no timeline for reuniting the McGuckins, Robinson said. An automatic review will be held in 60 days. 

The six McGuckin children — ages 8 to 16 — have been temporary wards of the state since they surrendered June 2 after a standoff with police at their Garfield Bay home. 

When deputies went to collect the children after arresting their mother, the kids turned their pack of dogs on officers and holed up with five weapons inside the rural house. The standoff ended peacefully five days later and they have been in foster care since then. 

“We’re not trying to tell her how to raise her children or what her beliefs should be,” Robinson said. “But there should be some basic education. They shouldn’t be living in filth.” 

After the hearing, McGuckin said she was “hanging in there.” Earlier Friday, she had said her medical condition might prevent her from regaining custody of her children. 

“I’m too sick to physically take care of them anyway,” she said. 

JoAnn McGuckin has pleaded innocent to the misdemeanor neglect charge, which carries a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $300 fine. 

Family attorney Bryce Powell, who wouldn’t comment on McGuckin’s medical condition, was disappointed with the judge’s decision. 

“The state has a legal obligation to reunite this family as quickly as possible,” he said. 

The family has been apart — able to see each other only in court or foster homes — since McGuckin’s May 29 arrest on a charge of felony injury to children. The charge was reduced to a misdemeanor last month and she was released from jail without conditions. 

The six children are Kathryn, 16; Ben, 15; Mary, 13; James, 11; Fred,9; and Jane, 8. 

Kathryn and Ben McGuckin testified Monday at a closed custody hearing. Afterward, Heise ruled the children were covered by the state’s child protection act, giving her the power to decide their custody. 

Prosecutors said McGuckin, 46, is an unfit mother because she was raising her children in a filthy home that lacked basic utilities such as running water. Dog feces littered the house. 

They have also suggested that McGuckin has a drinking problem that contributed to the family’s troubles. 

Negotiations toward a custody agreement failed, Robinson said, because prosecutors insisted on some form of state oversight, while McGuckin wanted a guardian of her own choosing, with no oversight other than by the court system. 

The oldest daughter, 19-year-old Erina, left home last year to join the Navy. She returned in April and her complaints to Robinson initiated the arrest and subsequent standoff. 

Erina testified that family members ate rodent-infested food in a feces-covered house that had no running water and little heat. She said her mother spent much of the family’s scarce money on alcohol and instilled bizarre, paranoid notions in the children. 

Her testimony countered earlier testimony by Kathryn McGuckin, who acknowledged many of the problems, but attributed them to the poverty brought on by the illness of both parents. 

The children’s father, Michael McGuckin, died in May after a lengthy bout with multiple sclerosis.