Former principal on man locked up for decades: “We knew it. We reported it. Not a damn thing was done”

Firefighters and police who responded to an active fire at a home in Waterbury, Connecticut on 17 February made a shocking discovery, locked inside an upper-floor room was a man who had been held there for 20 years. The 32-year-old male, who was severely malnourished and weighed only 68 pounds, informed authorities while receiving medical care that he had started the fire intentionally telling them, “I wanted my freedom.”

He told authorities that his stepmother, Kimberly Sullivan, 56, had been holding him captive in the room since he was around 11 years old. This prompted an extensive investigation which resulted in the arrest of Sullivan who is being held on a $300,000 bond charged with multiple felonies including first-degree assault, second-degree kidnapping, first-degree unlawful restraint, cruelty to persons and first-degree reckless endangerment the Waterbury Police Department stated on its Facebook page.

“The suffering this victim endured for over 20 years is both heartbreaking and unimaginable,” Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said in a statement.

“You knew something was wrong. It was grossly wrong”

Concerns about the situation at the victim’s home were raised long before he was locked up in an 8-foot by 9-foot room that had no heating or air-conditioning.

The former principal at the Barnard Elementary School in Waterbury, Tom Pannone, that Sullivan’s stepson attended until he was pulled out after the fourth grade told the local Connecticut NBC station, “We knew it. We reported it. Not a damn thing was done. That’s the tragedy of the whole thing.”

Concerns arose when teachers saw that the boy was extremely small and thin. He told them that sometimes he wasn’t allowed food at home when asked questions. Teachers, when they began seeing him eating out of the garbage or stealing food, brought food in for the child.

“Everyone really was concerned with this child since he was 5 years old. You knew something was wrong. It was grossly wrong,” Pannone told the outlet. He said that he and staff at the school called the stepmother multiple times as well as the Department of Children and Families (DCF) on at least 20 occasions.

In the arrest warrant, the outlet reports that he was told to lie to authorities when they came around and tell them that everything was fine. When he didn’t return to school, Pannone inquired about his former student’s whereabouts and was told that he was enrolled in another school.

However, he could find no record of that. Later he was told that the victim was being homeschooled.

The authorities say that the victim during his 20-year captivity endured “prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhumane treatment.” Over that time the victim had not received any medical or dental care. He was found in a severely emaciated condition, having been “provided with only minimal amounts of food and water” during his captivity “which led to his extremely malnourished condition.”

Neither the neighbors nor his family tried to stop the mistreatment

A neighbor told NBC Connecticut that she would see the husband, the now-deceased father of the victim, Sullivan and two daughters but rarely the boy. “We probably saw that guy three times outside,” Paulina Depina, who lived next door to where the victim was held in captivity between 2003 and 2009.

When she did see the boy, she found it deeply troubling. “I’m trembling right now just thinking about it because I can remember his face,” she told the outlet.

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