A mother and stepfather who forced their 11-year-old son to live in a filthy converted coal cellar have each been jailed for two years by a British court.

The couple told police they locked the boy in the tiny windowless room as punishment for stealing food from the family refrigerator.

The child, who cannot be identified because of his age, was left to sleep on a dirty mattress with a sleeping bag for a blanket.

The rubbish-strewn room had no heating, a bare lightbulb and concrete walls and floor.

The couple in their 40s, who also cannot be named, both admitted a single charge of cruelty by wilful neglect at an earlier hearing at Preston Crown Court.

See the full story at ITV News

He was forced to spend nights in the outhouse, which was linked to the living room of the family home in Blackpool, Lancashire.

Judge Norman Wright said that the experience of being locked in a windowless room in "appalling conditions" had taken a physical and psychological toll on the child victim.

"It is bound, in my judgment, to be profound," he said.

The traumatized boy was made to live and sleep in the room, described as a "cell" by social workers, and reduced to using a potty as he was locked up each night until morning.

ITV News is the UK partner of NBC News.

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BEIJING – On Monday, a Chinese boy took the ride of his very young life. The 3-year-old was in the care of his grandfather when he decided that he wanted to see his mother, who works at a local KFC restaurant.

The kindergartener, from the city of Wenzhou in China’s eastern province of Zhejiang, waited until his grandfather had gone to the bathroom, then set off through the streets on a toy motorcycle.

The bike had been a gift of a relative who had left the battery out of the bike. But the boy’s grandfather, surnamed Peng, had decided to install the battery.

The child rode about 1.3 miles before arriving at a major Wenzhou traffic intersection.

Without pausing, the boy zipped right into the middle of the intersection, avoiding buses and other vehicles.

Boy shrugs off talk of fear
At that point, a traffic policeman named Zhang spotted the boy weaving through the cars and gestured toward him to stop the bike, then escorted him to the side of the road.

The boy didn’t know his family’s phone number, but his anxious grandfather – who takes care of his grandson while the parents work – was frantically looking for him on the streets and eventually came across them.

Asked later by Zhang whether he was scared at any point, the boy merely shrugged and said he had already learned how to cross a street.

No word yet whether Zhang cited the boy for traffic violations or let him off with just a warning and a little traffic school.

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