The man puts the fire in the house, where Stepmom supposedly kept him captured: NPR

Note from the publisher: This story contains descriptions of the alleged domestic abuse.

After firefighters reacted to a fire in a house in Connecticut last month, one of his inmates announced that they had not only saved him out of the burning house – but from two decades of captivity.

The 32-year-old man, who was not named publicly, accuses his stepmother to keep him locked in a room in her house in Waterbury with minimal food and water and without access to medical care, dental care or a bathroom AB when he was about 11 years old.

Later, when he received medical treatment, he told the authorities that he had used hand dangers, printer paper and a lighter to direct the fire in his bedroom on the upper floor.

“I wanted my freedom,” he said to the first aiders, according to the Waterbury police department.

The Waterbury police announced on Wednesday that an investigation of their main crime department in cooperation with the public prosecutor's office of Waterbury found that the victim had been “held in captivity for over 20 years and that longer abuse, hunger, severe negligence and inhuman treatment lasted.”

“The suffering that this victim had over 20 years is both heartbreaking and unimaginable,” said Waterbury chief of police, Fernando Spagnolo, in an explanation and prompted law enforcement: “The perpetrator is fully responsible for these terrible crimes.”

The police said that on Wednesday she arrested the man's stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, due to assault, kidnapping, illegal reluctance, cruelty towards people and ruthless threats.

The 56 -year -old Sullivan was charged in court on the same day. Her lawyer, Ioannis Kaloidis, announced NPR via E -Mail that on Thursday you would appear “for the purpose of publishing bonds” on trial on Thursday, which were set to 300,000 US dollars.

Kaloidis said Sullivan “keeps her innocence and is looking forward to the opportunity to clarify your name.”

“While the allegations are serious, they are exactly that, allegations,” he wrote.

According to the police, Sullivan's stepson was saved from the fire of February 17th “in a strongly detached state”.

The medical records show that he only weighed £ 68.7, which, according to an affidavit from the police and an arrest, which was submitted to the Supreme Court and available by NPR, is considered life -threatening.

First aiders who treated the man for smoke in the crime scene noticed that he was “extremely emaciated, his hair was matted and neglected, he was very dirty and his teeth seem to be lazy,” it says.

Then he admitted to starting the fire and accused Sullivan to lock him into his bedroom. According to the affidavit, detectives later found incineration patterns on the floor of his room and locks – as well as plywood – on his bedroom door, which confirms his report.

The man who was hospitalized in a critical condition spoke twice to detective in February and March while he recovered in a medical facility.

“In the three hours in which MVI [Male Victim 1] It was asked that in the past twenty years he provided details of the development of his life that made up for a life in captivity, abuse and hunger, “said the court registration and described the man as a male victim 1 or MVI.

What the stepson claims

After the affidavit, the man told the detectives that some of his earliest memories sneak out of his room at night to eat food – and drink water out of the toilet – because he was hungry and thirsty. After his family discovered food packaging, he said in his room at night.

He said the department for children and families from Connecticut visited his house twice after his school had contacted it out of worry that he always seemed hungry – he would steal the food of others and eat out of the trash. After the second visit, he said Sullivan pulled him out of school permanently. At that time he was in fourth grade.

The man described the development of the locks on his door, from a chain lock to a padlock to a grinding screw lock. The police say that the room in which he had been locked up since the age of 12 was not a bedroom, but a “rear storage room” of about 8 feet of 9 feet.

He told them that as soon as he had stopped going to school, he remained the same for decades: he spent most of the day in his room and was only left out in the morning to do various tasks around the house, which he could take between 15 minutes and two hours.

“Essentially, MVI was locked up in his room between 22 and 24 hours a day,” says the affidavit.

He said he had received up to two sandwiches and the equivalent of about two small bottles of water a day to tell the detectives that “all day, every day, all day, all his life” was hungry. He said he hadn't been with a doctor since childhood and the only medicine he ever got was aspirin.

He said he was not made available and did not bathe in “one or two years”. He described a system to dispose of his waste, urinate in bottles – and to transport it out of a hole in the window by a series of straws – and to empty in newspapers on site.

He said he had trained with a dictionary and the various books that he received every year, followed the time with a calendar and almost exclusively learned about the world through a small radio that was kept outside of his room.

When asked why he was not talking about his experiences, the man quoted the risk of longer closures and the further restraint of food and the wrong hope that Sullivan would leave him out more if he deserves her trust.

“MVI said he thought of breaking the window (later to find out that there was a storm window that could not be removed), but MVI explained that” nobody “had me under pain,” the document says. “Sullivan MVI would say that.”

The man said alongside Sullivan and his father, his two half -sisters and his late grandmother knew his captivity.

He said his late father would occasionally let him out of his room longer to watch him remote or work the farm. He said the last time he left the property was about 14 or 15 years old to remove the wastage of gardening with his father – and that his “captivity and reluctance” got worse after the death of his father.

Sullivan's lawyer, Kaloidis, said reporters outside the court building on Wednesday that the biological father of the man was “the one who dictated how his son would raise”.

“We think the evidence comes out, you will see that [Sullivan]”It is not the villain for which she is made,” he added.

How he planned his escape

The affidavit says that the victim had owned the fateful lighter, “about a year earlier after his father died”. Then he received some clothes from his father – and the lighter happened to be in the pocket of an old jacket.

The man told the detective that the day on which he set the fire was relatively typical up to this point. He left his room twice to do the homework, once in the morning and once around 7 p.m.

“At around 8:00 p.m., MVI Sullivan's bedroom door hears nearby and he thought 'the same old, equally old',” says the affidavit. “He added that he did not remember when he remembered the decision to put the fire.”

He said Detectives that he knew that the fire should be serious enough that Sullivan could not bring it out alone. When asked how he knew that hand disinfectants could be flammable, he said to the detectives: “I read.”

The man said that he started the fire on the floor with his door and a stack of games, then stamped and called for help.

He said Sullivan opened his door and “got it up and went to the bathroom on the ground floor” because she didn't want the fire brigade to know about its appearance. “At some point he fell to the ground.

“He explained that he had stayed on the ground and was deliberately not up, so the fire brigade would be forced to get it,” the registration said. “MVI believed that this was the only way out of his situation.”

What others said

Kaloidis described the man's allegations as “completely untrue” and “unusual” on Wednesday outside of the courtroom. He said Sullivan denies to block him into a room or to restrict it in any way.

“These accusations seem to be based on the words of an individual and an individual,” he said. “I have seen nothing in the arrest warrant to state independent evidence to confirm these allegations. So we will see how they are in court.”

In the affidavit, however, the police found that they found holes from earlier locks on the door jam and plywood that were attached to each side of the door, “not only to strengthen them, but to prevent the manipulation of the external locks”.

“They could also see that the currently functional locks were on it and clearly thought of keeping someone, not someone from the room,” they wrote.

The submissions tested by NPR also include records of medical employees who examined the man after the fire and sworn a certificate of an uncle who was concerned about him.

The medical staff described him as a cachectic and referred to an illness that is also referred to as “Watting syndrome” and is characterized by significant involuntary weight loss and muscle mass. These records also show that the man talked to medical staff about his experiences and upset “concern about a hostage situation”.

The affidavit also states that the man's uncle, Kurt Sullivan, the detective, who explained that he hadn't seen him since 2004 or 2005. He said the PI proposed to look for a death certificate.

After visiting his nephew in the hospital, he said: “He looks like a Holocaust survivor.”