The boy had bruises and cuts and was punished by his mother's boyfriend and an overseer. Photo / NSW Police
The boy had bruises and cuts and was punished by his mother's boyfriend and an overseer. Photo / NSW Police
An 8-year-old boy who was beaten, starved and locked in a metal box by his mother's drug-addicted boyfriend felt "like an animal" and thought he "would be kept there forever".
Locked in a shipping container on a remote drug farm at Elands on the NSW mid north coast, the boy was lucky to be found by police in late 2015.
The boy's lasting trauma has been revealed in a court statement at the sentencing of his mother's former fiance, with him saying "sometimes it's like everything in my mind is dead", Fairfax News reports.
It was December 18, 2015 when officers went to the property at Elands, a tiny alternative community in the hills north west of Taree to make inquiries.
When police opened the entryway of a blue metal shipping container, they found a filthy, thin eight-year-old boy on a soiled mattress in the unventilated 2.4m by 2m enclosure.
The boy had a blanket but no food; limited water, and the floor of the enclosure was scattered with ant powder, news.com.au reported.
The boy had weeping sores and dirty dressings around his ankles.
He had bruises, abrasions and scabs, calluses, a broken front tooth, and a small burn on his hand. His bones lacked density and his muscles had no bulk.
He had been locked in there for several days at a time and denied permission to come out and use a toilet.
Inside the metal bunker where police found a boy, 8, starved, beaten and with open sores on a secret drug farm. Photo / NSW Police
He had been bashed for urinating in the corner, or for defecating into a tin.
His captor later told police the boy had been locked in the container as punishment for "acting inappropriately' to another boy.
The boy's mother lived on the farm with her fiance, her other children aged ten, three and 18 months.
The boy was sometimes visited by his mother and siblings and let out of his metal prison occasionally.
In a concealed underground bunker, police found a sophisticated hydroponic cannabis growing set-up including fans, lights, power and water nourishing 225 cannabis plants.
They also found a sawn-off rifle, capsicum spray, knives, swords and nunchaku.
The mother's fiance later admitted to habitually taking methamphetamine and imprisoning the boy for days at a time.
He had kicked the boy for taking the rubbish out, slammed his head into the container, and punched him in the leg.
When the boy was let out to do chores, he would be further punished by being made to hold bricks if he didn't complete them.
The boy had been taken out of school almost two months earlier in October.
The following month police were called to the property to investigate suspicions about his welfare.
Four children on the clandestine farm were living in and about the elaborate drug set-up. Photo / NSW Police
Following that visit the man and the property's overseer, who was allegedly even more brutal, placed the boy in the container.
The boy's mother told police she was against the boy being held captive in the container, but was sentenced for false imprisonment, failing to provide for her son and cultivating cannabis.
The overseer received more than six years' prison with a minium for four years and five months for cultivating the commercial crop to which he exposed children, false imprisonment, assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and weapons offences.
The boy's uncle received a minimum sentence of just under two years and a woman received 17 months for weapons and cannabis cultivation offences and has already been released from jail.
