"After the fire, an officer who saw the man described him as “extremely emaciated.” He stood 5-foot-9 and weighed 70 pounds. He was dirty. His hair was matted. All his teeth looked rotten.
Police executing search warrants found plywood and a lock on the door to the man’s room, the affidavit says.
Now, Male Victim 1 – who’s in stable condition at a medical facility – is faced with having to build a life, the police chief told reporters. He’ll have to overcome mental and physical ailments he developed inside the small room in conditions worse than those of a jail cell."
Horrible story. I wonder why she let him have a lighter, though.
The situation got worse when the stepson’s father died last year, the victim told police, per a warrant for Sullivan's arrest.
Talk about parents from hell.
From a different source, people were doing a lot to reveal this stepmother but couldn’t get any response.
“He wasn’t the only one who noticed. Teachers at the school brought in meals for the student after they noticed him stealing food and digging around in the garbage.
“Everyone really was concerned with this child since he was 5 years old. You knew something was wrong. It was grossly wrong,” Pannone said.
The former principal said he and his staff called not only Sullivan — the stepmother — but also the state’s Department of Children and Families at least 20 times.
At some point during the boy’s fifth grade year, he disappeared entirely.
Pannone was told that the boy had been transferred to Wolcott Public Schools, but he tried to look for a record of the move and found no evidence of the boy’s attendance. Later, he was told the boy was being homeschooled.”
“According to Spagnolo, officers investigated Sullivan years ago over treatment of the victim. However, the abuse continued anyway.
“It’s shuttering to think that someone would treat any person, let alone a family member or someone who was entrusted with a guardian or parental figure, in this way,” Spagnolo said.
Police revealed Thursday that they first investigated the family in 2005 when other children told Department of Children and Families workers that they were worried about the victim. The victim had been pulled out of school around that time because they had contacted DCF.”
Does anyone here live near Waterbury? Is there anything we can do for this man? IS there a go fund me or anything? Any way to contact? If this is true, I can’t imagine what this man went through, and is now going through. I am sure social services are helping him, but as an adult I don’t know what they can do.
I like how they left the lighter out of the headline in click bait fasion.
Comparable to something like this:
Man escapes prison using toilet paper -
A convict used toilet paper to wipe up and flush debris created as he cut through his prison bars with a file...
I’m guessing she was getting some sort of monthly check to be his “care-taker.”
Hope he is able to recover from all those years of abuse...
These stories make me wonder how many other people are trapped, but we never hear about them.