TRUNKS
July 6th, 2004, 02:32
An Ontario couple have been sentenced to nine months in jail for keeping their two adopted sons chained in cages over a 13-year period when they were not in school.
The couple – the boys' 42-year-old biological aunt and her 52-year-old husband – pleaded guilty in January to two counts each of assault with a weapon, forcible confinement and failing to provide the necessities of life.
Ontario Court Judge Donald Halikowski condemned the couples' behaviour Monday, but said there was no evidence that the couple were sadists.
“Both accused share equal responsibility as parents,” he said before handing down the sentence. “Both failed.”
The couple cannot be identified to protect the identities of the boys, now 17 and 18.
“I don't feel (justice) has been served,” said one boy, 17, as he stood shoulder to shoulder with his 18-year-old brother outside the courthouse. “I feel they should get more time.”
Even close relatives of the couple denounced the sentence as too lenient, given the judge's description of the boys' treatment as “near torture.”
“What is (the judge) saying to the boys?” their maternal grandfather asked. “This really bothers me. It really does.”
The horrors they endured at the couple's farmhouse in Blackstock, near Port Perry, were uncovered when three family members contacted the children's aid society. Police and child-welfare workers descended on the family home on June 4, 2001.
They found a 15-year-old boy curled up in a cage fashioned from a baby's crib. The cage was strapped to the wall and padlocked.
His brother, 14, walked out from a room that contained a second cage.
The boys, who were one and two years old when adopted, told a horrific story of being beaten, forced to sleep in the cages, often given only buttered bread for dinner, of eating their feces to avoid being punished for having an accident and of drinking their urine when deprived of water.
The boys did not learn until after they had been removed from the couple's custody that their biological mother died when they were toddlers and that the couple they considered their parents are their aunt and uncle.
The boys are living in separate foster care and going to high school.
Only 9 months? HOW
The couple – the boys' 42-year-old biological aunt and her 52-year-old husband – pleaded guilty in January to two counts each of assault with a weapon, forcible confinement and failing to provide the necessities of life.
Ontario Court Judge Donald Halikowski condemned the couples' behaviour Monday, but said there was no evidence that the couple were sadists.
“Both accused share equal responsibility as parents,” he said before handing down the sentence. “Both failed.”
The couple cannot be identified to protect the identities of the boys, now 17 and 18.
“I don't feel (justice) has been served,” said one boy, 17, as he stood shoulder to shoulder with his 18-year-old brother outside the courthouse. “I feel they should get more time.”
Even close relatives of the couple denounced the sentence as too lenient, given the judge's description of the boys' treatment as “near torture.”
“What is (the judge) saying to the boys?” their maternal grandfather asked. “This really bothers me. It really does.”
The horrors they endured at the couple's farmhouse in Blackstock, near Port Perry, were uncovered when three family members contacted the children's aid society. Police and child-welfare workers descended on the family home on June 4, 2001.
They found a 15-year-old boy curled up in a cage fashioned from a baby's crib. The cage was strapped to the wall and padlocked.
His brother, 14, walked out from a room that contained a second cage.
The boys, who were one and two years old when adopted, told a horrific story of being beaten, forced to sleep in the cages, often given only buttered bread for dinner, of eating their feces to avoid being punished for having an accident and of drinking their urine when deprived of water.
The boys did not learn until after they had been removed from the couple's custody that their biological mother died when they were toddlers and that the couple they considered their parents are their aunt and uncle.
The boys are living in separate foster care and going to high school.
Only 9 months? HOW