Police: Mother, boyfriend caged and starved 5-year-old boy

A Florida couple has been accused of shocking child abuse

Authorities in Homosassa, Florida, have accused a mother and her boyfriend of horrific acts of child abuse against the woman’s 5-year-old son.

Crystal Jean Ciampa, 26, along with her boyfriend, Joshua Louis Heater, 26, have been charged on multiple counts of child abuse, child neglect and tampering with a witness, according to the St. Petersburg Times.

Ciampa denies any wrongdoing, but police say Heater confessed and implicated Ciampa for severely abusing her son, who she has said reminds her of the boy’s father, her ex-husband. Ciampa has five sons with three different men, but she is only accused of abusing one.

Child services have been investigating Ciampa and Heater for over two years, but say that they were unable to act because the boy either refused to talk to them or blamed one of his brothers for his various injuries and bruises. It wasn’t until February of this year when authorities learned that Ciampa had caught the boy sneaking a can of soda without asking permission, so she forced him to “chug” the drink until he vomited, and then made him lick the vomit off the floor. After that incident, the boy and his four brothers were removed from the home.

Police corroborated the allegations in 12 separate interviews, detailing extremely disturbing child abuse acts such as locking the boy outside in 30 degree weather in only his underwear, burning him with a cigarette lighter, cutting his hands with a cake cutter, and caging him in a closet where they starved him and the boy says he was forced to eat his own “poop” and “pee.” Sheriff’s Sgt. Mike Kanter called the acts “unfathomable.”

Ciampa’s mother, Billie Murray, is having trouble accepting her daughter is responsible for such a level of abuse, telling a reporter, “You’d have to be more than an animal to do this. I couldn’t imagine that my daughter could…”

She trailed off, in tears, finally adding that she will seek custody of her five grandchildren and hopes to raise them, saying, “They didn’t ask to be brung into this world. They deserve to have a beautiful life.”

Police also say Ciampa and Heater were trafficking prescription painkillers from the home.