A 6-year-old Hammond boy whose parents are on trial for child neglect testified Tuesday that he was kept tied to his bed with a leash that was padlocked around his foot.
The boy, wearing a T-shirt and blue shorts, spent an hour on the witness stand in Lake County Superior Court in Crown Point, Ind., and described how a denim strap wrapped with duct tape and fastened with a padlock ”hurt my ankle.”
The boy`s parents, Lottie DeMontigney, 31, and her former husband, John W. Wolfe, 29, were arrested by Hammond police after a next-door neighbor heard the boy crying for food on Mother`s Day and found him sitting in the window of his bedroom, shackled to his bed.
On the witness stand, the boy twice answered ”no” when prosecutor Derla Gross asked whether he wanted to be restrained that day or ever again.
”Why?” she asked.
”Because it hurt my ankle,” he said.
Under questioning from defense attorneys, the boy admitted that he often sneaked out of the family home at night, played with cigarette lighters and one time set fire to a bathroom towel while his parents slept.
”Did your parents use the chain to keep you from getting into things at night?” asked attorney Thomas Vanes, who is representing the father.
”Yes,” the boy answered.
Before he was tied to the bed, the boy said, he sometimes slept with his mother, who attempted to keep him from wandering by tying a string between her ankle and his. But he said he learned how to untie it and escape.
Police Officer Wendy McBride testified that she found the boy sitting on a urine-soaked bed. His clothes also were soaked with urine, and there were feces in his underwear, she said.
In opening arguments, the mother`s attorney, Darnail Lyles, described the boy as a troubled youth who often ignored his parents. ”If discipline is reasonable under the circumstances, it`s not violative of the law of the State of Indiana,” he told the three-man, three-woman jury.
If convicted, the parents could face up to 3 years in prison.
According to testimony, the couple had divorced but still lived together. After their arrest, the boy was placed in a foster home.
Octavia Allen, the neighbor who called police to report the boy`s condition, testified that the boy`s father had left home after an argument with his ex-wife on the Friday before Mother`s Day and did not return until Monday.
She also said she had never seen the father abuse the boy either physically or verbally.
