I feel like I’m reading a grim fairy tale when I hear this story: In a tiny room, he was locked in by his stepmother and father for two decades, starved, never allowed outside, and forced to dispose of his waste through a window. He’s now 32.
His means of escape? With a pocket lighter and a bottle of hand sanitizer, he set his prison on fire, hoping to be rescued. Firefighters found him weighing just 68 pounds; he said he hadn’t left that house since he was 12. In this harrowing case, so many cries for help went unheard.
