Couple gets nine months for caging adopted sons

[TRUNKS]

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

 

[darkcurves]

Crap, that is sick. This people deserve the same thing they have done, they should be caged and forced to drink their own urine.

 

[Robert]

Laws are Laws. You can't make up a sentence.. you have to go based on what the law will allow. Foruntantely, there isn't a law for this type of behavior. I say fortunantely because that would indicate that this isn't an everyday occurance, and most likely is the only one we'll see/hear about for the next couple of decades.

 

[darkcurves]

This kinda sick thing happens very often, it's just that we dont know about it.

 

[Robert]

This kinda sick thing happens very often, it's just that we dont know about it.

and sometimes it's better that we don't know.

 

[stabme]

the article says the kids were let out of the cage to go to school. why hadn't they gone to some sort of official, a counselor, another family member...when they were let out? or possibly run away? the irrationality bothers me, as well.

but atleast they were let out for school. otherwise, were they kept caged, with almost no interaction, they would've never learned english, or any language--or try to make up their own?--and be practically undeveloped for the rest of their life. without a language, thinking processes aren't up to par (as bad as mentally-disabled individuals)

 

[GregT]

That's just plain sick.

They deserve a hell of a lot longer sentence.

 

[jmiller]

Trust me, they'll get exactly what they serve in prison.

 

[darkcurves]

and sometimes it's better that we don't know.

So you mean avoid it?

 

[Robert]

So you mean avoid it?

Not avoid it.. Just don't make it public. We're aware that humans are capable of doing some horrible things to each other, wars have shown us that (ie. beheadings).

 

[stabme]

by just ignoring, nothing will get accomplished.

if the allies ignored the thousands upon thousands of tortured people in the concentration camp, what would've happened? the head german leaders might've come out scotch free, that's one possibility. Another would be an ignorance brought onto the coming generations, and no precedence available.

it's like they say, if you ignore history, you're inevitably doomed to repeat it.

 

[jmiller]

Not avoid it.. Just don't make it public. We're aware that humans are capable of doing some horrible things to each other, wars have shown us that (ie. beheadings).

Beheadings are nothing, Robert.

Stuff far closer to home has been much more brutal, take Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy for example.

 

[Robert]

Beheadings are nothing, Robert.

Stuff far closer to home has been much more brutal, take Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy for example.

A beheading is very close to home, infact, closer than ted Bundy as i wasn't around during his shopping spree.

 

[jmiller]

A beheading is very close to home, infact, closer than ted Bundy as i wasn't around during his shopping spree.

Those were just examples of some of the most brutal crimes in America.

Far more brutal that a beheading.

 

[darkcurves]

Not avoid it.. Just don't make it public. We're aware that humans are capable of doing some horrible things to each other, wars have shown us that (ie. beheadings).

Why not make it public? So that nobody knows about the bad stuff that happens? Only if you the boy who were caged for 14 years.

 

[TRUNKS]

the article says the kids were let out of the cage to go to school. why hadn't they gone to some sort of official, a counselor, another family member...when they were let out? or possibly run away? the irrationality bothers me, as well

Since I imagine they'd see no TV or anything its all they'd know so they probabaly were taught all parents did that do their kids.

 

[email]

http://www.webivo.com

 

[kiara]

eating theire bloody feces and drinking urine? the guardians should be shot... slowly... in the leg... while being tied up in a cage... let the poor kids shoot them in the leg.. then the crotch... then the ears... see how they feel!!!
thats sad.. the poor poor kids!

there were 2 similar stories i read, one where the girl was living in a cage for ages, was beaten, raped and all by her owners (mother and father - yuk) and the house flooded, and she drown.. poor thing

also, where the boy had no name, they called him 'IT' and they made him eat his little brothers poop from his nappies, and his mother made him vomit every afternoon so that she could check if he had eaten at school or not.. the poor poor kid... then if he had eaten at shcool they'd make him eat the vomit... yuk