"John" JOLIFF - 14 yo - Developmentally Disabled - Erie/ Denver CO

by TomTerrific0420 Fri Oct 28, 2011 7:09 pm

A Colorado mother
is accused of locking her 14-year-old developmentally disabled son
inside a squalid trailer, feeding him just four meals a week, then
abandoning him to take a trip with her boyfriend, prosecutors said on
Thursday.

Amanda Jolliff, 36, is charged
with false imprisonment, child abuse, and at-risk neglect of her son,
discovered to be living in a rodent-infested mobile home in Erie,
Colorado, northwest of Denver, according to a statement from the Weld
County District Attorney's Office.
Her live-in boyfriend, Richard Smith, 31, also was charged, it said. They were jailed on $20,000 bond each.
According
to an arrest warrant affidavit, police were called to the mobile home
park last month after a neighbor found the boy, who was not identified,
hiding underneath his porch with his mother nowhere to be seen.
The
neighbor said Jolliff and Smith had taken a bus to New York two weeks
earlier, and others who lived at the home had moved away, leaving the
boy to fend for himself.
When
police searched the home, they found mice scurrying throughout the
residence and "detected an overpowering odor of animal urine and feces,"
according to the affidavit.
Inside the home were two dogs, a macaw, two cockatiels, a cockatoo, two ducks and four toads, police said.
The
boy told police his mother would lock him inside his room, letting him
out just to clean up after the ducks. He said that since 2008 he was fed
spaghetti or macaroni just four times a week.
Police
said the boy's bedroom window was boarded up, and there was an outside
lock on his bedroom door. Inside the pantry, police said they found bags
of spaghetti noodles that had been chewed open by mice and contaminated
with droppings.
The boy said he
was supposed to be home-schooled but that he had not received any
education since his mother removed him from public school three years
ago.
When Jolliff was located by
police and questioned, she admitted to locking up the boy because he
would run away and "used to irritate me really bad," the affidavit said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/28/us-childabuse-abandon-idUSTRE79R0AE20111028