By Ed White
Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) — A judge has dismissed torture charges against the father and stepmother of a Detroit boy found in his basement after 11 days, saying she doesn’t believe the story of a child who claimed he was so paralyzed by fear that he couldn’t call for help during a highly publicized search by police.
“He never yelled out. He never stood up. He never made himself known,” Judge Shannon Holmes said last week after hearing testimony over many days. “I just don’t believe him. I don’t believe he was in that basement” for the entire period.
Nonetheless, the judge ordered Charlie Bothuell and Monique Dillard-Bothuell to stand trial on child abuse charges, based on photos of the 13-year-old’s body and allegations that he was struck with a stick or PVC pipe.
The boy, also named Charlie Bothuell, was reported missing from his home last June. After 11 days, police searching the cluttered basement found him behind a barrel. The discovery led to an unflattering investigation of the couple and allegations that the boy was a victim of abuse for years.
Charlie, who was 12 last summer, said his stepmother sent him to the basement because he interrupted his mandatory workout, which typically involved hundreds of sit-ups, pushups and thousands of revolutions on an elliptical machine. He described his home as a “terrible place.”
“She said if I heard anything just shut up and be quiet. ... I didn’t know what was going to happen to me if I didn’t listen,” Charlie said about going to the basement.
But the judge said the story was not believable. Holmes noted conflicts between Charlie’s testimony and what he told police about food and using the bathroom during those 11 days. She also criticized the testimony of a doctor who was offered as an expert in child abuse but had only looked at the boy’s records and hadn’t even talked to him.
The dismissal of the torture charge was a big victory for the couple because the crime can carry up to life in prison. The Bothuells cried with relief and hugged their lawyers.
Outside court, Dillard-Bothuell declined to comment. Bothuell said he wanted to thank God and the judge.
In her final argument, prosecutor Carin Goldfarb said Charlie was a “prisoner in his home,” and the elder Bothuell was the “warden.”
“He was so terrorized, even when the police were looking for him he did not speak up” in the basement, Goldfarb told the judge.
Defense lawyers, however, said Charlie was lying and had many opportunities to leave the house during his alleged time in the basement — a key point embraced by the judge.
“The stepmother did not cause him to hide — repeat hide — behind a freestanding 3-feet barrel. He did it out of his own free will,” attorney Godfrey Dillard said, adding that Charlie was playing a “game of hide-and-seek with horrendous” results for the family.
The child abuse charge carries a maximum punishment of 10 years in prison. The couple will appear next in Wayne County court on July 8.
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