The first shock for police when they pushed open the door of the small house was the odour the smell of a home where the windows were never opened.
The first shock for police when they pushed open the door of the small house was the odour the smell of a home where the windows were never opened.
They followed it to a darkened bedroom where, on a urine-soaked mattress, they discovered a skinny, naked,
|
|
prison: The bedroom where seven-year-old Dylan was locked in darkness |
seven-year-old boy. He had never been to school, never seen a doctor, never been allowed to play with other children and rarely enjoyed fresh air. "When we found him, he said, 'He won't hit me this evening'," said Eric Delchambre, the police chief in Millau, France.
Dylan had been mistreated all his life, by a brutal father and a submissive mother. Detectives say he was shut in his room every evening when his 42-year-old father, a builder, returned home. The door was locked from the outside and the shutters were padlocked.
The only furnishings were a bed covered in two blankets but no sheet, a desk without drawers and a doll. The light switch was outside the bedroom and was kept off. Dylan was forbidden to go to the toilet.
"A prison cell would have been more comfortable," said Patrick Desjardins, the state prosecutor in Millau.
Delchambre said that Dylan had been locked in his bedroom since infancy.
Difficult childDylan has now been placed with a foster family and his parents remanded to custody. They said they had shut their son away because he was difficult and turbulent.
