A woman from Utah has been arrested for locking her son in the bathroom, where she had kept him prisoner for more than a year.
It is reported that 36-year-old Brandy K. Jaynes of Toquerville, Utah, has been arrested on aggravated felony child abuse charges. The woman allegedly locked one of her children, a 12-year-old-boy, in a bathroom at their home for over a year.
The boy’s father found him weighing just 30 pounds, malnourished and he couldn’t even stand up. Washington County Lt. David Crouse said:
“The child looked like he was the victim of a concentration camp from World War II.”
The bathroom reportedly had two locks, including one that allowed it to be locked from the outside. They found faeces scattered across the room, a blanket, an empty can of beans, and a camera which could monitor the boy’s activity from outside the room. It is believed that Jaynes used the camera to observe the boy from an app on her cell phone.
Two other kids were reportedly also removed from the home, both of whom were siblings of the abused boy. Neither of them needed medical treatment.
According to the New York Daily News, the doctor who treated the boy deemed his situation the worst case of malnourishment he had ever seen.
Jaynes claims that she locked her son in the bathroom because he liked to sleep in there and that it was “for his safety when she would leave the house.”