Woman locks son in feces-filled bathroom and starves him until 12-year-old shrinks down to 33 pounds

A Utah mother who starved her son and locked him in a feces-filled bathroom will serve decades behind bars, the Spectrum reports.

A judge ruled Monday that Brandy Jaynes must serve up to 45 years in prison for keeping her son isolated in a bathroom for 7 to 8 years, causing him to become so malnourished that he couldn’t stand.

Jaynes, 36, had pleaded guilty in July to three counts of second-degree felony child abuse.

The 12-year-old boy weighed just 33 pounds when his father rescued him in January. At the time, the boy was lying in a blanket on a bathroom floor that was laden with feces.

The father subsequently brought the boy to a hospital where doctors found that he had a vitamin deficiency and had pressure sores from lying in the same location. His skin was also peeling and he could hardly walk, the newspaper reports.

“The child looked like he was the victim of a concentration camp from World War II,” Washington County Lt. David Crouse said at the time the boy was discovered, as reported by CrimeOnline.

The bathroom door had been locked from the outside and had an alarm system to alert Jaynes if the boy ever tried to escape.

Jaynes also installed a baby monitor so she could see a video feed from inside the bathroom.

Authorities said Jaynes repeatedly lied to the father and had prevented him from seeing the child.

While the boy did not appear in court, he wrote a letter to the judge that detailed the abuse.

“Instead of eating breakfast, lunch and dinner, I would only get one meal of a couple of hot dogs every other day for months, the boy wrote in the letter. “I felt frozen when I was drenched with ice cold water in the winter.”

A lawyer for the mother said Jaynes had “personal issues” and “become addicted to heroin and Methamphetamine” for several months before the father found the boy.

The attorney also argued that Jaynes was “overwhelmed by having a child with severe special needs.”

“This is the story of a woman who began to fail in her duties to her family, in particular to one son who needed help in a different matter, and she failed in that regard and things got worse,” the lawyer said.

Now 13 years old, the boy says he still wants a relationship with Jaynes, writing in the letter that “she did horrible things to me, but she’s still my mom.”

The father has been charged with third-degree felony reckless child abuse because authorities believed he should have helped the boy sooner.

[Featured Image: Washington County Sheriff’s Office]