Kimberly Sullivan, fifty-six, the stepmom of the young man thirty-two, held her stepson captive for twenty-two years and subjected him to harsh abuse, which consisted of constant starvation and neglect, was arrested on March twelfth.
The thirty-two year old man escaped by setting a fire in his small room where he was locked in for days on end on February seventeenth. When he was found, prosecutors said he was severely underweight, only being sixty-eight pounds at five foot nine, due to only being let out of his room for a fifteen minute to two hour period to do chores, and only given two sandwiches a day as well as two bottles of water.
He was held captive since he was eleven, and started the fire because he “wanted his freedom,” the Waterbury Police stated.
Allegedly the man’s fifty-two year old biological mother Tracy Vallerand, told NBC Connecticut that she gave up custody of her son when he was a baby, and has been searching for him for years now; however, every time she tried she found nothing.
Vallerand believed that once she gave up custody to the father, her baby would be safe and cared for.
“When he is healthier and he’s stronger, if he wants a relationship with me – I am right here. I’m not going anywhere.” Vallerand stated to CNN US.
Due to being held captive for more than a decade, he had no social media, or c0nnections with the outside world.
The victim’s mother, and half sister have been worried about him for years and waited until he was eighteen to attempt to contact him.
The man stated that once he reached his teenage years during his captivity, he was forced to be in his room for twenty-two to twenty-four hours a day, and had to relieve himself with a homemade funnel that ejected his urine out the window.
After his father died, the abuse by his stepmother got worse, but it was thanks to him that he escaped. In February he found his deceased father’s lighter and scavenged for printer paper, and lighted it on fire.
He is now recovering at a medical facility hoping to make a full recovery, both mentally, and physically.
