A Connecticut woman was arrested after she allegedly held her stepson captive in a small room for 20 years, prosecutors alleged.
The 32-year-old victim was set free on February 17 after he intentionally set his bedroom ablaze, telling responding firefighters, “I wanted my freedom.”
Prosecutors said the stepson weighed just 68 pounds and was “akin to a survivor of Auschwitz’s death camp” when he was discovered.
He reportedly told police that Kimberly Sullivan, 56, had been keeping him in an 8-foot-by-9-foot room since he was 11 years old, “enduring prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhumane treatment.”
Supervisory Assistant State’s Attorney Don Therkildsen said that the “facts of the case” are “quite frankly, something out of a horror movie.”
“That’s without exaggeration,” he added.
The victim set the fire using “some hand sanitizer and some paper from a printer.”
“[He] lit that fire very well knowing he could die. But he had been locked in the room for 20 years, and for 20 years, he’d been trying to get out of that room.”
