"Ga. couple who confined teenage son sentenced" AP, March 01, 2013
DALLAS, Ga. — A mother and stepfather who confined their teenage son to a bedroom for years with little food were each sentenced to 15 years in prison Thursday after pleading guilty to cruelty to children and false imprisonment charges.
Under an agreement with prosecutors, Paul and Sheila Comer each will also serve 15 years on probation. They were ordered not to have any unsupervised contact with minors and to forfeit all their assets, which will be put in a trust for their children, said Paulding County District Attorney Dick Donovan.
Their son, 18-year-old Mitch Comer, was found wandering around in a Los Angeles bus station in September. He told police he had suffered years of abuse.
The plea agreement allowed the county to avoid the expense of a trial and kept prosecutors from having to call Mitch Comer and two younger Comer children as witnesses ‘‘to relive what was a pretty horrendous time in their lives,’’ Donovan said.
Mitch Comer weighed 87 pounds when he raised the suspicion of a guard at the bus station. He told police his stepfather put him on a bus on his 18th birthday with a few hundred dollars cash and a list of homeless shelters.
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