The heartbroken biological mother of a Connecticut man who was starved for so long he looked like an ‘Auschwitz survivor’ is desperate to reconnect with her son after he spent 20 years in his wicked stepmothers house of horrors.
Prosecutors say Kimberly Sullivan, 56, inflicted ‘prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhumane treatment’ on the now 32-year-old man over two decades.
He was only able to escape when he set a fire using hand sanitizer, a lighter and paper last month.
Court documents say the victim was given just two cups of water each day but was sometimes forced to drink out of the toilet.
Lawyers for Sullivan indicated that she intends to plead not guilty to the charges at her upcoming arraignment on March 26.
Now his biological mother has spoken out, wanting to reconnect with her son for the first time in over 30 years.
Tracy Vallerand, 52, told DailyMail.com that the last time she saw her son was when he was six months old, describing him as a cute kid.
Vallerand has said she would ‘absolutely’ love to reconnect with her son, but respects that he is an adult, who can make his own decisions.
‘My concern right now is him getting healthier and stronger,’ she told DailyMail.com. ‘He’s a 32-year-old man. If he wants me to be in his life, I will be there in a heartbeat that it’s his choice.
‘I had my own problems going on, I didn’t give him away. His father took custody of him. He was supposed to be safe there.
‘After he got full custody he would not allow me to see him and I don’t know if it was vindictiveness that we split. So I lost all contact with him.
‘So many people have failed him. he was supposed to be safe, he was supposed to be cared for, he was supposed to be loved.
‘He was supposed to be allowed in education, fall in love, do whatever boys do, play sports, have a life.
‘He was denied that, and that makes me angry, that makes me upset. He shouldn’t have ever had to deal with that, and he shouldn’t have ever been afraid because they terrorized him.’
Prosecutors described the boy as being ‘akin to a survivor of Auschwitz’s death camp’, with officials confirming he remains in a medical facility for treatment.
Coury filings state that he weighed just 69 pounds by the time he escaped from the 8-foot-by-9-foot room he had allegedly been shut in since he was in the fourth grade.
Authorities believe the man ‘had been held in captivity for over 20 years, enduring prolonged abuse, starvation, severe neglect, and inhumane treatment.’
As he was being treated for smoke inhalation, he confided in rescue crews that he set the blaze intentionally as a means to escape.
‘I wanted my freedom,’ the man allegedly told police as he was carried out of the property on February 17.
Public records show that Vallerand and the boy’s father, Kregg Sullivan, were married on June 26, 1992 and divorced two years later.
Obituaries refer to Sullivan, who died in January 2024, being a beloved father of three children, but no record of the son exists in any official database.
She last saw him when he was six months old, only finding out what happened to him with the rest of the world.
On January 21, 1995, Kregg remarried Kimberly, who was then using her maiden name, Kimberly Boyle.
She branded Sullivan’s plea as a ‘disgrace’, adding: ‘There’s so much evidence against her in.
‘Everybody else in that household that knew he was there, and you can’t say his sister didn’t know he was there. They probably went underground like the trolls they are.
‘I would never turn him away. I mean, even if they realized that he was too much of a burden, they could have called. They could have reached out. DCF could have actually did their job.’
A GoFundMe set up by Safe Haven of Greater Waterbury, which has raised over $190,000 for his treatment.
His mother says he ‘deserves every penny and more’, after his treatment at the hands of his family and the local government.
Teachers who were present in the boy’s childhood say there were always warning signs.
‘Nothing surprised me about the situation… Every year, every teacher had concerns’ Tom Pannone, the former principal of the now-closed Barnard Elementary School, told Daily Mail.
He says the victim attended the school from when he was in kindergarten to fourth grade, only to vanish when teachers began to raise concern about his wellbeing.
‘I caught him one day in the urinal flushing it to drink water, because I don’t think he could reach the water fountain at the time… It was insane, I’m sick to this day about it… as a human being I feel sick.’
After years of complaints to officials, the boy did not return to the elementary school for fifth grade, according to Pannone, who says he tried contacting public schools to see if he had been enrolled there, and eventually was told the boy was being homeschooled.
‘I don’t know how the Department of Children’s Services and police could have gone to the house and saw him and say everything’s okay… a blind man could look at the kid and know he’s not right.’
Sullivan is facing charges of first-degree assault, second-degree kidnapping, first-degree unlawful restraint, cruelty to persons and first-degree reckless endangerment.
A judge decided on supervised release by a probation officer. Sullivan’s bond was set at $300,000, which she has since posted,
Her attorney has pointed the finger at the boy’s father, arguing that Kregg made ‘decisions’ about his son’s life.
Sullivan even claims she encouraged better personal hygiene but ‘couldn’t force’ him to wash, and says she was ‘aware’ of his weight but wasn’t responsible for it.
‘She completely maintains her innocence, from our perspective. These allegations are not true. They are outlandish.
‘She was blown away when she heard these allegations,’ Kaloidis previously said.
Despite her claims, the boy described his captivity as becoming even more restrictive following the death of his father, who had been confined to a wheelchair for an extended period of time.
The man said that his stepmother, his now-deceased father, two half-sisters and now-deceased grandmother were the only people aware of the situation.
He vanished from the now closed Barnard Elementary school in fourth grade,
prompting a wellness check by state social workers with the Department of Children and Families and police officers in April of 2004.
‘Officers went to the house. It was clean, it was lived in,’ Fernando Spagnolo, the chief of the Waterbury Police Department, said.
‘They spoke to the victim at that time and there was no cause for any alarm, or any conditions that existed that would have led officers to believe anything other than a normal childhood,’ he added.
Police visited the home for a second time later that month, where the family requested to file a harassment complaint against school district members who continued to report them.
The Department of Children and Families said records of the visits were unavailable despite ‘extensive searches,’ as any case-related paperwork is discarded after five years if the claims are deemed unsubstantiated.
‘Then after that, it just sort of fell through the cracks or fell out of anyone’s notice at that point and continued on,’ Pernerewski added.
The now-32-year-old man told police that his stepmother had instructed him to claim he was fine during the two previous visits, a lie that paved the way for years of more continued abuse.
Around the age of 14 or 15, the affidavit reads, the victim left the property for the very last time to help his father dispose of yard waste.
Afterward, while he was occasionally allowed out of the small room for 15 minutes to a few hours each day, he was locked and confined inside for at least 22 to 24 hours a day.
His only outside access was allegedly through a radio outside his bedroom, he told police. The radio helped him keep track of the years, current events and his other interests, including NASCAR and University of Connecticut basketball.
The affidavit notes that police found the man had ‘ultimately educated himself’ using the three or four books he received each year, along with a dictionary he relied on to learn unfamiliar words.
For years, the man told police, he only ate egg, tuna salad or peanut butter sandwiches. When it came to water, he was allegedly given only two cups a day or was forced to drink out of the toilet.