When rescued from a Connecticut home, the deeply debilitated man “similar to the survivors of the death camp in Auschwitz” was able to survive decades in captivity by drinking from the toilet, urinating bottles, and eating two sandwiches a day.
The tragic details of the 32-year-old's life, locked in a small room inside a Waterbury home, appeared Wednesday after his stepmother, 56-year-old Kimberly Sullivan, was arrested and charged with a shocking pattern of abuse that he likened to a “horror film.”
The victim, weighing only 68 pounds, was opened to police about a hellish situation where he was forced to endure since childhood, when he was rescued so that he could escape nightmares after deliberately burning the house on February 17th. (A “average” 32-year-old American male weighs around 200 pounds, according to CDC data.
According to court documents, he spent at least 22 hours of the day locked up in a cramped, 8 x 9 feet of “back storage space” on the second floor.
Malnutrition Vic told officers he was given just two glasses of water a day and he desperately drank the toilet when he had the chance.
Every day he is said to be given to eat two sandwiches. This consisted mainly of deli meat, peanut butter, and sometimes tuna and egg salads.
“When asked if he was hungry every day, he said, “All day, every day, my whole life,” court documents state.
As a little boy, the victim recalls holding a “training toilet chair” in the cramped bedroom.
However, when he was a teenager, he was forced to resort to bottles and newspapers to soften himself.
“[The victim] After he urinated into the bottle, he explained that he needed to concentrate it on a tube made up of a series of straws and lead those straws into a window hole to empty it.
When he needs to defecate, he will place an old newspaper on the floor and squat on it.
“Then he rolled up a piece of paper, tied it with a string that had been unraveled from his old T-shirt, and brought it to the kitchen trash when he was finally let go.”
By the time he was rescued, the victim had either not properly showered in two years or the three had not had a haircut, authorities said.
He told the officer he had a water bottle in his room and would save a small portion of his drinking water every day so he could take a bath.
“If that bottle is full, he said he'll do what he can to bathe himself with that amount of water,” the complaint said.
He was removed from the quarters every day around 8am just to do chores, he told officers.
“He said he was entrusted with completing some chores at home that could take 15 minutes to two hours depending on what he had to do,” Filing said.
“Usually, late in the morning he was brought back to his room where he was locked up there throughout the rest of the day and the whole night until it was time to do another chore the next day.”
Sometimes he would be locked up for 24 hours in a row, officers said.
The victim said he spent time counting cars through the window, reading from the dictionary and listening to radios placed outside his bedroom.
He gave tragic details of his alleged capture during a police interview last month after being rescued from a home fire.
The investigation determined he had been bred for more than 20 years, during which time he was starved and ignored, authorities said.
“He resembles a survivor of Auschwitz's death camp without exaggeration,” officials said of the victim's condition.
His stepmother has been charged with assault, inducing, illegal restraint, cruelty and reckless danger.
She was arrested Wednesday and was taken into custody in lieu of a $300,000 bond.
