A Connecticut woman was arrested on Wednesday and accused of holding her stepson captive inside a small room for decades before he escaped by lighting a fire inside the home, Waterbury police announced.
Kimberly Sullivan, 56, was charged with first-degree assault, second-degree kidnapping, first-degree unlawful restraint, cruelty to persons, and first-degree reckless endangerment, police said in the announcement. She allegedly kept her now-32-year-old stepson captive for over 20 years inside their home, where he endured “inhumane treatment,” police said.
Sullivan’s attorney Ioannis A. Kaloidis told reporters his client maintains her innocence and called the allegations against her “outlandish.”
“He was not locked in a room,” Kaloidis said. “She did not restrain him in any way. She provided food; she provided shelter. She is blown away by these allegations.”
The first time authorities investigated Sullivan and her family was in 2005, when her stepson was 11 or 12. The boy’s school called child protective services to investigate his family after he was seen asking other students for food, stealing it, or going through the garbage due to hunger, according to an arrest warrant obtained by HuffPost. However, Sullivan allegedly instructed her stepson to say everything was fine.
“They spoke to the victim at that point in time, and there [was] no cause for any alarm, or any conditions that existed that would have led officers to believe anything other than a normal childhood,” Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said at a press conference Thursday morning, CBS affiliate WFSB reports.
Sullivan permanently pulled her stepson out of school on the second child service visit.
The warrant alleges that the stepson, whom authorities are not naming, remained locked inside an 8-by-9-foot room, sometimes for 24 hours straight, although his father occasionally let him out. However, according to the document, the man’s living conditions became worse over time, and his father died last year.
The stepson was eating and drinking less, and a normal day for him consisted of looking out the window to count cars that drove by, according to the warrant. The document alleges that he lived in fear of longer lockdowns or less food, but on Feb. 17, he used hand sanitizer and a lighter he had received from his late father to start a fire by lighting a piece of paper.
Police said that Sullivan was already outside the house when first responders arrived but that the stepson remained inside, where he suffered from smoke inhalation, until he was evacuated.
Authorities said that the 32-year-old was in a “severely emaciated condition” and that he told first responders, “I wanted my freedom.”
“There’s a lot of physical therapy that he’ll have to go through,” Spagnolo told reporters. “There’s a lot of healing that he’ll have to go through, mentally.”
Need help? In the U.S., call 1-800-799-SAFE (7233) for the National Domestic Violence Hotline.