A Connecticut man was supposedly kept captive and starving for his stepmother for more than two decades escaped from the small room where she had been locked in fire, the authorities said Wednesday.
When the authorities responded to the fire in Waterbury, to the southwest of Hartford, on February 17, they found a severely 32 -year -old man who had not received medical or dental attention in years and had undergone “prolonged abuse, hunger, serious negligence and inhuman treatment,” said the police department in a press release.
According to an affidavit in support of an arrest warrant, the authorities were sent to the family’s house at 8:42 pm in an active fire report.
The man, who was being treated by smoke inhalation, told an officer who replied that he set fire using a lighter, disinfectant for hands and paper.
“I wanted my freedom,” he said, according to the affidavit.
His stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, 56, was at home at that time and refused to talk to the police, police chief Fernando Spagnolo said in an interview.
Spagnolo said that in his 33 years in the application of the law, “this is probably one of the worst acts of inhumanity that I have witnessed.”
A relative who visited the stepson after being released compared his condition with that of a survivor of the Holocaust, Spagnolo recalled.
“I am grateful that the victim is in repair,” he said.
Sullivan was arrested on Wednesday and processed by kidnapping positions, assault, illegal restriction and other crimes, according to the statement. His bonus was set at $ 300,000.
Sullivan denied the accusations through his lawyer.
“I was not locked in a room,” said the lawyer, Ioannis Kaloidis, to NBC Connecticut. “She didn’t hold it in any way. She provided food; She provided shelter. She is impressed by these accusations. “
In reading Sullivan charges, prosecutors said the stepson, who has 5 feet 9, weighed 68 pounds when he was found and told the authorities that he had been locked inside an 8 by 9 feet room from the fourth grade, according to the station.
The man, identified only as MV-1 in the affidavit, told the authorities that they let him out in the morning for 15 minutes or two hours to do tasks before being locked again.
“When he was asked how often this routine was, he said ‘almost every day,'” says the order.
The man recalled that his father used to let him out of the room on weekends, according to the affidavit, and occasionally he was allowed to work in his patio.
The last time he remembered having left the property was almost 20 years ago, when he was 14 or 15 years old, according to the affidavit.
After his father died, his captivity became more intense, according to the affidavit: two sandwiches were given a day and the equivalent of two small bottles of water.
When a detective asked why he never told anyone about his situation, he said he wanted to do it, but feared “the constant threat of longer blocks and a greater decrease in food,” according to the sworn statement.
He “describes a life of being mentally conditioned by Sullivan,” says the document. “He said the threat was that” I wouldn’t see daylight “if I told someone and, knowing that he had little time out of his room to that point, it wasn’t something that could risk.”
The stepson was at school to the fourth grade, said Spagnolo. An investigation of state officials in 2005 found an adequate home education plan, he said, and there was no contact with the police or other officials in the intermediate years.
At one point, an uncle worried after visiting the family for Christmas and the stepson seemed skinny, meek and modern, said Spagnolo.
When he tried to talk to the boy, said Spagnolo, Sullivan intervened.
“The family moved him away,” said Spagnolo. “I asked questions, he tried to communicate over time, but never received any answer.”
He added: “There was a lot of inaction of the people closest to the victim. That is really difficult to judge. We all have families. We all understand how domestic situations work. It seems that this continued for quite some time and Kimberly had much success hiding this from public view and even the eyes of his family.”
