(When they sentence her they should make it part of her sentence to be kept in the same condition that she kept her stepson.)
Emergency workers responding to a fire in Waterbury, Conn., found the man, 32, who weighed only 68 pounds and had been held captive in a tiny room.
Emergency workers in Waterbury, Conn., who responded to a house fire last month said they discovered a shocking scene: After they rescued a woman, they found her emaciated adult stepson, who said he had started the fire in a desperate bid to break free of the tiny room where she had imprisoned him for two decades.
“I want my freedom,” the man told firefighters after they found him, coughing from smoke inhalation and suffering from other injuries, according to a statement from the Waterbury Police Department.
The police did not publicly identify the man, but said he was 32 years old and 5 feet 9 inches tall and that he weighed 68 pounds.
On Wednesday, almost one month after the fire, the police arrested the man’s stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, 56, who owned the home and had been the one to call 911 to report the fire. The police said her stepson had been severely abused since the age of 11.
When the police found the man, he was “extremely emaciated, his hair was matted and unkempt, he was very dirty and his teeth all appeared to be rotten,” according to an affidavit filed on Tuesday with Connecticut Superior Court.
He was brought to a nearby hospital, where the police said he was intubated and diagnosed with cachexia, or wasting syndrome, a form of severe physical deterioration typically found in patients with conditions like advanced cancer.
He had a life-threatening body mass index of 11 and appeared to be near starvation, the police said. He had a decreased ability to use his arms and legs or twist his torso, according to court documents.
The documents also said that he was suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder and that he was functioning at “an adolescent cognitive level.”
Ms. Sullivan was arraigned on Wednesday on a range of charges, including assault, kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment, and was placed in the custody of the Connecticut Department of Correction, the police said. Neither the police nor the court documents mentioned the man’s biological father.
During the investigation, the police determined that Ms. Sullivan’s stepson had been held captive in an 8 foot by 9 foot room that was unheated in winter and not air-conditioned in summer. They said he had endured “prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect and inhumane treatment.”
The police statement said the man “had not received medical or dental care” during two decades in captivity. “Investigators further discovered that he had been provided with only minimal amounts of food and water, which led to his extremely malnourished condition,” the statement said.
Ms. Sullivan’s lawyer, Ioannis Kaloidis, did not respond to a message seeking comment on Wednesday, but in an interview with a local television station in Connecticut, he called the allegations against her “outlandish.” He said she had never imprisoned her stepson.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/nyregion/waterbury-woman-stepson-captive-20-years-connecticut.html
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