The 13-year-old boy’s adoptive parents in Indiana are under arrest after it is alleged that they forced him to endure up to 10 days without access to a toilet in a camper outside the home as punishment.
The child was eventually sent to a mental health facility, and the parents refused to pick him up when he was released.
According to documents obtained by Law & Crime, Patricia and Richard Heitz were detained on Wednesday and accused with two charges each of neglect of a dependent, which includes abandoning or cruelly confining a dependent.
A probable cause document acquired by Law & Crime states that on July 5, 2024, the Department of Child Services (DCS) received a report stating that the victim was being neglected and abused. DCS then launched an investigation into the parents. The kid and his two younger siblings “get ‘whoopings’ with belts and paddles on their buttocks,” according to the report.
In addition, it was claimed that the victim’s punishment included being made to “eat lumpy oatmeal with vinegar” and spend the night “outside in the family’s camper during the winter months with no working heat or utilities.”
The victim was placed on a one-week hold at the Memorial Epworth Center, a psychiatric hospital for adults and adolescents 13 years of age and above, on July 6, where the Heitzs took him.
After the boy’s mental health “deteriorated” during the previous six months, the boy’s parents informed DCS later that day that they “did not want him around the other two children in the home due to his ‘aggressive’ tendencies.”
The youngster was “in no danger,” according to the parents, who denied physically assaulting him and claimed that all of the kids had been forced to sleep in the camper at one point. In addition, both parents declared that they “acknowledged the consequences of refusing” to let the victim return and that they did not want him to.
The other two kids in the house claimed the victim made them feel “unsafe,” but they both disputed that their parents had physically harmed them.
Source: Law & Crime