NEWARK – A couple has been charged with child endangering after reportedly locking up a six-year-old in an unfinished basement on a regular basis for months and routinely “disciplining” him with leather a belt.
READ MORE: In The Columbus Dispatch
Angel Abram, 34, and Joshua Bergeron, 38, both of Newark, were arrested on Tuesday after the county children’s services agency received a complaint. The six-year-old, who is Abram’s son, and two older siblings told police and a children-services worker that the six-year-old was routinely locked in a room in the basement of their Wilson Street home, where he was forced to eat his meals alone, according to criminal complaints filed in Licking County Common Pleas Court. The child was also repeatedly hit with a belt on his buttocks, according to the complaint.
The boy was kept in a 6-foot-by-8-foot room in the unfinished basement when he was not in school, Assistant Prosecutor Paula Sawyers said on Wednesday. The room, which had no door handle and was locked from the outside, contained only a deflated air mattress, blanket and pillow, she said.
The boy was allowed to use only a potty-training chair for toddlers and was responsible for carrying the chair upstairs to dump its contents and clean it himself, according to the complaint.
In taped confessions to police, both Abram and Bergeron admitted to regularly locking the boy in the basement since May, the complaint said.
Both Abram and Bergeron are being held in the Licking County jail. Each are charged with single counts of child endangering, a second-degree felony. Bond was set Wednesday at $100,000 for Abram and $200,000 for Bergeron. Each was ordered to have no contact with the other or the victim.