SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The estranged husband of a woman arrested after her 12-year-old son was found severely malnourished and locked in a feces-strewn bathroom in southern Utah was charged with child abuse on Tuesday.
Prosecutors filed one third-degree felony charge against the 40-year-old man about a month after the mother was charged with a more serious second-degree count of child abuse.
The boy weighed just 30 pounds when he was found in the bathroom with one blanket, a few empty cans of beans and a camera that may have been used to capture what was going on in there, police said. Authorities have said they believe the room was dark most of the time and he'd been kept there for at least a year.
Court records show the man filed for divorce about three weeks after his wife was arrested in the small southeastern Utah city of Toquerville. The Associated Press is not naming either defendant to avoid identifying the boy.
Court documents don't detail the exact child abuse allegations, but the type of charge indicates the man is accused of not stepping in to stop the abuse, said Edward Flint, a lawyer for the mother.
Prosecutors didn't immediately return calls for comment Tuesday, nor did the man's divorce attorney. No lawyer was listed in the criminal case against him.
The defendant is the boy's father, and he lived in the house during the months police say the boy was locked inside the bathroom, Flint said. He said the mother didn't mean for the boy to be hurt, but was overwhelmed caring for him and the situation slipped out of her control. She is being held on $20,000 cash-only bail, an amount Flint is asking a judge to lower.
Police have said the child's father found him in the bathroom and took him to a hospital. The child has since been released and is in state custody.
