Utah parents arrested for locking their son in a padlocked cell say they’ll do it again

United States Police officers responded to a report of a child locked in a makeshift cell at a home in Kearns, Utah. When they arrived, they found the victim padlocked in an alcove under the stairs of the house.

Police said the child had been locked in the alcove for at least 24 hours before they arrived. The child told officers he was locked in the makeshift cell after Gray, his stepmother, spanked him for yelling in the house.

The arrest report said the victim “reported being hungry, lonely and forced to sleep curled up in the makeshift cells.”

Before the victim was moved to the locked area under the stairs, he was said to have been locked in a similar makeshift cell under a loft bed. The victim told police they were locked under the bed for months, but then released long enough to use the bathroom.

The police statement reads: “[The victim] spoke of a time when [they were] desperate to get out of the cell to go to the toilet. [The victim] was able to escape the cell and use the bathroom because no one responded [their] begging to get out.”

According to the arrest report, Gray and Peterson, 49, told police they found nothing wrong with locking the child under the bed or up the stairs.

The 41-year-old claimed she wanted the victim to “know what it was like in a city and in the real world”, while Peterson allegedly said the victim would be put back in the makeshift cell when they returned home.

United Police Sergeant. Aymee Race said: “Keeping it [kids] behind makeshift cells is not the way children should be raised.”

Investigators also discovered that the victim was only fed twice a day and was let out of the makeshift cell to use the toilet three times a day. The victim’s 22-year-old brother was also reportedly locked up in a similar manner when he was a child – and was forced to “defecate in his dresser”.

Race said: “These cases come up all the time. These are young children being raised by people who should be caring for them, providing them with food, water, shelter, care and love, and not in these circumstances.”

During the investigation, Peterson admitted to working in healthcare and feared the incident would cause him to lose his job because “the nation and the world are cracking down on this kind of thing.”

The victim was placed in the care of family members while the Utah Division of Child and Family Services and Unified Police investigate the crimes.

Peterson and Gray were being held in the Salt Lake City County Jail without bail.