Tell us what you think of this article. Take a short survey.
Correcting a child for inappropriate behavior is something all parents do at one time or another. But in this case it was extreme, resulting in parents of the 14-year-old child booked into Maricopa County jail on a number of felony accounts.
In January of this year, Phoenix police investigated a child-neglect case and found that a teenage girl had been treated like a prisoner in her own home. The unimaginable treatment had been on-going for nearly two months. Her moment to escape came when both of her parents left the residence and she climbed through the attic space and into another section of the house. She fled on her bicycle to a movie theater where an elderly couple gave her $50. She continued to a store where she bought a backpack, food and water and then rode to a Scottsdale café where she asked an employee to call police.
According to Phoenix police investigators, during her eight weeks of imprisonment, the child was locked in a bathroom without running water, fed canned foods, crackers and bread, and was forced to exercise until she was exhausted. If she stopped exercising, her father beat her with a belt and metal rods and pulled her hair.
When police investigators and Child Protective Service counselors visited the girl’s residence they found an extremely disturbing scene. The teen’s father did not know she was missing and allowed a search of the home. He led them to a room that he said was his daughter’s bedroom. It was locked from the outside and once opened, was determined to be the bathroom she had described. Inside, they found a five-gallon bucket filled with urine. On the floor was a blanket that had been the girl’s bed along with shoes, empty food containers, and other belongings.
Just what had the child done to deserve her punishment? Her father and mother admitted their daughter had been disciplined for stealing food from the kitchen and cheating on a home school test. On February 4, 2010, Scott Bass, 33, and Andrea Bass, 31, the girl’s father and stepmother, were both booked on felony charges including unlawful imprisonment, kidnapping, child neglect, and child abuse. The family also consisted of four other children who are currently in CPS custody.