A Utah woman has been arrested after police discovered her son locked in the bathroom, where she had kept him prisoner for over a year.
KSTU reports that 36-year-old Brandy K. Jaynes of Toquerville, Utah, has been arrested on aggravated felony child abuse charges. Jaynes allegedly locked one of her children, a 12-year-old-boy, in an upstairs bathroom at their home for over a year.
Police said the boy's father found him weighing only 30 pounds. They said he was so malnourished he couldn't even stand up.
Washington County Lt. David Crouse said, “The child looked like he was the victim of a concentration camp from World War II.”
Investigators discovered that the bathroom had two locks, including one that allowed it to be locked from the outside. They found a single blanket, feces scattered across the room, empty cans of beans, and a camera that could monitor the boy's activity from outside the room.
Police believe Jaynes used the camera to observe the boy from an app on her cell phone.
Two other children were reportedly removed from the home, both of whom were siblings of the abused boy. However, neither of them needed medical treatment. The abused boy is expected to be in the hospital for at least three weeks.
According to the New York Daily News, the doctor who treated the boy deemed his situation the worst case of malnourishment he had ever seen.
Jaynes claims that she locked her son in the bathroom because he liked to sleep in there, and that it was "for his safety when she would leave the house."
Sources: KSTU, New York Daily News / Photo credit: KSTU,
