Indiana Teen Kept in Dog Kennel and Threatened with Weapons

[Wonderlust]

A Lowell-area couple has been charged with 16 felonies based on allegations by a 14-year-old boy who told police he ran away from home to escape beatings with a horsewhip and belt, confinement in a dog cage and threats with knives and a gun.

Tina Louise Graham, 40, and Vernon D. Widner, 55, of the 12700 block of West 162nd Avenue, are charged with abusing the boy for more than two years at their home. The boy described being stripped naked and physically abused by Graham and Widner, whom he described as his mother’s fiance. Police had been involved with the victim since September 2010 regarding him running away from home because of alleged abuse, and the Indiana Department of Child Services was contacted. In March, the boy met with police and detailed the allegations.

The mother withdrew the child from Lowell Middle School in January and he wasn’t being home-schooled. The boy told police Detective Lawrence Thurmond that he ran away from home even more when he no longer had school as a way to be away from his abusive home life, the probable cause affidavit states.

The mother enrolled him in a treatment program at Northwest Community Hospital for a month ending in January.

The boy said the couple locked him inside a dog kennel, forced him to take extremely hot showers and allowed him one meal a day. He was abused with a whip, threatened with having his testicles cut off and had a loaded gun placed to his cheek, the probable cause affidavit states.

Once, when the boy was hiding in a car in his grandfather’s pole barn in Lowell, Widner allegedly jumped on top of him, held him down with his arm around his neck, and choked him until his body started to go numb and he couldn’t breathe.

The boy told police his mother and his juvenile sister would hold him down during the beatings with a horsewhip, which occurred between August and November 2010.

The boy also described being locked in a dog kennel overnight beginning in October 2010 through January 2011. The child was placed in foster care in March.

Graham is free on $5,000 cash bond. Widner is being held on $70,000 bail, or $7,000 cash.

Graham and Widner were charged with criminal confinement, intimidation, battery, neglect of a dependent and strangulation. The charges are punishable by a maximum 20-year sentence.

http://posttrib.suntimes.com/9443470...-dog-cage.html

[Valasca]

I'm not sure why it still surprises me when I see stories like this.
There are other ways to get rid of an unwanted child. Adoption, for instance.

[Tundratot]

His mother and her aging bf should be forced to live in the basement of an outhouse.

"His juvenile sister"? What age is she? 18 or 8? Is she all right? Not being abused, too, or even molested by wrinkle boy?

Just how long did it take for the boy to get police and social services to take him seriously? The article states that in March he met with the police. This is December. What's been going on in the meantime? How long has he been out of school?

[kniption]

ya'll know i like pictures....

well. maybe not of these two wingnuts. ...but most pictures.

[cubby]

Geeze Louise.............if they adopted him out, to, you know, give him a chance of a better life, who would they have to terrorize! Don't you people know nothing!

[Whisper]

A Lowell, Indiana woman and her fiancé face 16 felony charges for abusing her teenage son over a 2 year period.
The alleged crimes are so violent, if found guilty they could get 20 years in prison.
40-year-old Tina Louise Graham and 55-year-old Vernon Widner were arrested Friday and accused of keeping the woman's 14-year-old son in a dog kennel, threatened to cut off his genitals, put a gun to his head and gave him only one meal a day.
Sources say they have been in contact with Indiana’s Dept of Child services at least six times in recent years to report abuse in the family home. The agency tells WGN that it has the utmost confidence that case managers handled the boy properly.
Local police have been in touch with the Graham family since the fall of 2010. They responded to calls about a runaway. Child services removed the child from his Indiana home last March and he is now in protective custody
[...]

http://www.wgntv.com/wgntv-man-woman...ory?hpt=ju_bn5

still not much more out yet