A Connecticut man alleged to have been held captive and starved by his stepmother for more than two decades escaped the small room he had been locked away in by setting their house on fire, authorities said Wednesday.
When authorities responded to the blaze in Waterbury, southwest of Hartford, on Feb. 17, they found a severely emaciated 32-year-old man who had not received medical or dental care in years and had been subjected to “prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect and inhumane treatment,” the police department said in a news release.
According to an affidavit in support of an arrest warrant, authorities were dispatched to the family’s home at 8:42 p.m. on a report of an active fire.
The man, who was being treated for smoke inhalation, told a responding officer that he set the fire using a lighter, hand sanitizer and paper.
“I wanted my freedom,” he said, according to the affidavit.
His stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, 56, was home at the time and refused to talk to police, Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said in an interview.
Spagnolo said that in his 33 years in law enforcement, “this is probably one of the worst acts of inhumanity I’ve ever witnessed.”
A relative who visited the stepson after he was freed compared his condition to that of a Holocaust survivor, Spagnolo recalled.
“I’m grateful the victim is on the mend,” he said.
Sullivan was arrested Wednesday and arraigned on charges of kidnapping, assault, unlawful restraint and other crimes, according to the release. Her bond was set at $300,000.
Sullivan denied the allegations through her attorney.
“He was not locked in a room,” the lawyer, Ioannis Kaloidis, told NBC Connecticut. “She did not restrain him in any way. She provided food; she provided shelter. She is blown away by these allegations.”
At Sullivan’s arraignment, prosecutors said the stepson, who is 5-feet-9, weighed 68 pounds when he was found and told authorities he had been locked inside an 8-by-9-foot room since the fourth grade, according to the station.
The man, identified only as MV-1 in the affidavit, told authorities he was let out in the mornings for 15 minutes to two hours to do chores before he was locked away again.
“When asked how often this routine was he stated ‘nearly everyday,'” the warrant says.
The man recalled that his father used to let him out of the room on weekends, according to the affidavit, and he’d occasionally be allowed to work in their yard.
The last time he recalled leaving the property was nearly 20 years ago, when he was 14 or 15, according to the affidavit.
After his father died, his captivity grew more intense, according to the affidavit: He was given two sandwiches 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 but he feared “the constant threat of longer lock downs and further diminishment of food,” according to the affidavit.
He “describes a life of being mentally conditioned by Sullivan,” the document says. “He stated that the threat was that he would ‘not see the light of day’ if he told anyone and, knowing that he had little time out of his room to that point, it was not something he could risk.”
The stepson was in school until the fourth grade, Spagnolo said. An inquiry by state officials in 2005 found a home-schooling plan adequate, he said, and there was no contact with law enforcement or other officials in the intervening years.
At one point an uncle grew concerned after he visited the family for Christmas and the stepson appeared skinny, meek and mild-mannered, Spagnolo said.
When he tried to talk to the boy, Spagnolo said, Sullivan intervened.
“The family pushed him away,” Spagnolo said. “He’d ask questions, he tried to reach out over time, but he never received any response.”
He added: “There was a lot of inaction by the people closest to the victim. That’s really hard to judge. We all have families. We all understand how domestic situations work. It seems like this went on for quite a long time and Kimberly was very successful hiding this from the public eye and even her family’s eyes.”
