Man (32) weighing barely 30 kg discovered: stepmother imprisoned him since age 11

A shocking story from the US state of Connecticut.

On February 17, the fire department was called to a fire at a house on Blake Street, a quiet road in the southwest of Waterbury. The woman who lived there was already outside on the pavement with her little dog and two cats, but she called out to the responders that her stepson was still inside.

A firefighter then saw him lying on the kitchen floor and brought him outside to safety. The man is 1.75 metres tall and reportedly weighs only 30 kilograms. He admitted that he had set the fire himself because he had been held captive by his stepmother since he was eleven. An officer would later say that he looked like ‘a survivor of the Holocaust’. The trip to the hospital was also the first time he had left the house since he was 12.

He had been locked up all those years in a space measuring 2.4 by 2.7 metres. He had to use newspapers for his excrement and drain his urine out of the second-floor window. He was given barely anything to eat or drink all those years. His teeth were so rotten that they sometimes broke off while eating.

The New York Times reports that neighbours thought the Sullivan family was a family of four: the parents and two daughters, who seemed to lead a normal life. The father died last year.

Since his rescue, the man has been staying at a hospital's rehabilitation centre. He is receiving both physical and psychological support.

The man's stepmother - Kimberly Sullivan (57) - has been arrested and faces a life sentence for charges including abduction, abuse, cruelty, and unlawful imprisonment.

(FVDV - Source: The New York Times - Illustration: ©Unsplash)