![In discussing the arrest of Kimberly Sullivan, Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo, appearing with Waterbury mayor Paul Pernerewski Jr. said, "[In] 33 years in law enforcement, this is the worst treatment of humanity that I've ever witnessed. Honestly, when we first started talking about it, we just really couldn't believe it. It took a lot of convincing amongst ourselves to just really accept what was going on. It's really hard to talk about still. I mean, it's shuddering to think that someone would treat any person, let alone a family member or someone that was entrusted as a guardian or a parental figure, in this way."](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/05fd166/2147483647/strip/true/crop/6534x4356+0+0/resize/840x560!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F1e%2F8d%2Fe8fd6a5c4d57a705b3a4a1d88e8d%2F250312earlychildhoodedmmb-3575-b.jpg)
Police on Thursday released new details in the case of Kimberly Sullivan, a Waterbury woman accused of holding her stepson captive in harrowing conditions for two decades.
“[In] 33 years in law enforcement, this is the worst treatment of humanity that I've ever witnessed,” Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said. “Honestly, when we first started talking about it, we just really couldn't believe it.”
Police allege the 56-year-old Sullivan kept her 32-year-old stepson, whose identity officials have not released, captive in a small room that locked from the outside from the time he was around 11 years old. He was discovered by firefighters in February after police say he lit a fire in an attempt to escape.
“It was worse than the conditions of a jail cell,” Spagnolo said, noting that the victim, who stands 5 feet 9 inches tall, weighed just 68 pounds when rescued.
Sullivan, who was arrested Wednesday, faces charges including assault, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, reckless endangerment and cruelty to persons. She is next due to appear in court on March 26, police said. Her attorney, Ioannis Kaloidis, said his client was “stunned to hear the allegations” and denied them.
“What she indicated to me was that they were absolutely not true, and as we get more information we intend to put up a vigorous defense,” Kaloidis said by phone. “But she’s adamant she did not do the things that she’s accused of.”
The victim’s father, who shared the home with the victim and Sullivan, died in January 2024, the chief said.
Spagnolo said during his captivity, the victim was only allowed outside the room for as little as 15 minutes per day. He had not made prior attempts to escape because of a fear of retaliation by his stepmother, the chief said.
Police described how the victim would allegedly go to the bathroom in the locked room, using an “elaborate mechanism that he created where he would urinate in a bottle, and he had straws connected to the bottom of the bottle, and he found a hole in the storm window frame that he was able to put these straws through,” Spagnolo said.
“He did that because the storm window itself wouldn't open up, and he was fearful that if he broke that storm window or tried to open it up, that there would be some retaliation,” he said.
According to an arrest warrant for Sullivan, in addition to emaciation, the victim’s teeth were also rotten. He told investigators he had never been to a dentist or doctor in his time spent locked in the room. He did not remember the last time he had bathed.
The victim told investigators he was pulled out of school in fourth grade after school officials contacted authorities over his behavior, including eating food out of the garbage due to hunger.
Police had conducted a welfare check in 2005 on the request of the state Department of Children and Families, Spagnolo said.
DCF issued a statement Thursday saying it was “shocked and saddened for the victim and at the unspeakable conditions he endured.”
But after conducting a search of records, the agency said it was “unable to locate any records pertaining to this family nor any records connected to the names of others who have indicated they made reports to our Department.”
Reports of neglect and abuse that have been investigated and not substantiated are expunged five years after completion of the investigation, the agency said, “provided there are no other substantiated reports.”
"We will continue our search and ask anyone with additional information to contact the Waterbury Police Department,” the statement reads.
The 2005 welfare check was the last contact police had with the family in that investigation, Spagnolo said. Investigators are currently looking at school records and DCF reports to uncover more information.
“The house was clean,” he said. “They spoke to the victim at that point in time, and there was no cause for any alarm or any conditions that existed that would have led officers to believe anything other than a normal childhood and a normal family existence was occurring.”
The Associated Press and Connecticut Public’s Jim Haddadin contributed to this report.
