Nine people are arrested after a three-year-old girl was found locked inside a wooden box in the middle of family living room 

• A three-year-old girl was kept in a plywood box for extended periods of time
• Police found the girl curled up inside the container with the lid slammed shut
• Three of the child's relatives have been arrested along with six others
• The small box contained a mat, bed sheet and dead bugs and could be locked  

Nine people, including five teens, face charges after it emerged a three-year-old girl was being kept in a ply wood box by her dependents.

Officers from the Pulaski County Sheriff's Department responded to the home, in a small town about 65 miles southeast of Chicago, to investigate reports of child abuse and discovered the girl curled up inside the box with the lid shut. 

The girl is said to have been kept in the small container, which had dirty bed sheets, a mat and dead bugs inside, during the evenings and over extended periods of time.

The discovery was made on December 14 and Patricia Meeks, 18, Donna Short, 42 and Christopher Short, 25, have been charged with child neglect.

A further six people, including five teenagers, were charged with failure to report child abuse.

On Tuesday, Sheriff Jeffrey Richwine said he couldn't believe a child would be kept in such abhorrent conditions and that it was the worst case of child abuse he could recall. 

'Never seen anything like this,' Richwine told WNDU.

'You go there and think, "Hopefully this is not true. Nobody's going to have a small girl in a box, that's just not going to happen." And you go there, when they say it, you just don't believe it. You're thinking, "My God, who would do this?"'

Richwine also said he believes that the box was sometimes locked from the outside so the occupant couldn't get out. 

He said he also worries that the child could end up back in the hands of the same family members who kept her in the container.   

Police haven't disclosed the condition of the toddler but say she and five other juvenile dependants of the arrested were released to the custody of the Pulaski County Indiana Department of Child Services.