A Virginia mother and her boyfriend were charged this week after police discovered that they chained up two young boys inside a Groveton home.
Officers responding to a possible child neglect report from the boys’ sister on August 15 could hear the chains rattling as they knocked on the door.
When they entered the home, they saw a chain wrapped around a post and two boys, aged 7 and 9, restrained at the ankles.
The boys’ mother, 47-year-old Wedni Del Cid Rodriguez, and her boyfriend, 29-year-old Franklin Viera Guevara, claimed restraining the boys for brief amounts of time to “scare them.”
Investigators noticed visible chain marks on the boys’ ankles indicating they had been restrained for an extended period.
According to court documents, one of the brothers managed to send his sister a photo of his chained ankle using a roommate’s phone.
The roommate told cops the couple would restrain the kids while they were out of the home.
A next-door neighbor described the boys as “unruly” adding that their mother, who worked to provide for the family, seemed “overwhelmed.”
Rodriguez and Guevara were charged with two counts of child neglect, two counts of child cruelty, and two counts of abduction.