Utah Mom Charged After Locking Son in a Bathroom and Starving Him for a Year
A Utah woman has been arrested after her 12-year-old son was found locked in a squalid bathroom in a severely malnourished state.
The woman, 36-year-old Brandy K. Jaynes, was charged with aggravated felony child abuse on Monday.
The boy's father found him in an excrement-filled bathroom in the mother's house in Toquerville, a small southeastern city in Utah, on Friday and rushed him to the hospital. His plight was brought to the attention of the Washington County Sheriff's Office who obtained a warrant to search Jaynes' home.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
The visiting detectives found a deplorable sight during their investigation -- the bathroom were the boy was held was strewn with feces and a few empty cans of beans along with a camera whose footage was streamed to Jaynes' phone. They also suspect the boy to have been held in the dark as the light switch was covered with 3 square feet of duct tape to prevent its usage and the bathroom door had locks on the outside, said Lt. David Crouse of the Sheriff's Office on Tuesday, reports the Associated Press.
The boy, whose name has not been released, is in a gravely emaciated condition and weighs just around 30 pounds. His treating doctor said it was the worst case of malnourishment he had ever witnessed and the boy would have to remain in the hospital for at least 3 weeks to recover.
"The child looked like he was the victim of a concentration camp from World War II," Lt. Crouse said. "It is one of the most horrible things I've ever had to see, I wish I could unsee it."
Speaking to two other children who were removed from the home, both siblings of the boy, officials learned that the 12-year-old was trapped in the bathroom for over a year.
The siblings also said that they last spoke to their brother through the bathroom door over six months ago. The two children did not require medical attention and are currently in the care of child protective services.
In her statement to the detectives, Jaynes said that the boy wanted to sleep in the bathroom and she only occasionally locked him inside for his safety when she left home. She also claimed that she was trying to feed protein shakes to her son in order to increase his weight, reports Fox13.
Brandy Jaynes is due in court on January 17 to face the child abuse charges levelled against her by the authorities.
