The child, whose identity is being protected is seen above in an interview after his rescue from their squalid home. Photo / WBTV
The child, whose identity is being protected is seen above in an interview after his rescue from their squalid home. Photo / WBTV
Warning: Distressing content.
A boy who was found chained to a front porch with a dead chicken around his neck is suing his former foster parents for years of sickening abuse.
The child was 11 when he was rescued from the squalid home of Wanda Sue Larson, 60, and her boyfriend Dorian Harper, also 60, in North Carolina in November, 2013.
He told investigators how the pair burned his face with electrical wires, broke his fingers with pliers and made him sleep in dirty blankets on the floor of the house that was infested with animal feces.
Wanda Sue Larson, 60, (left) was released from jail in 2015 for time served since her 2013 arrest. Dorian Harper (right), also 60, remains behind bars. Photos / Union Country Sheriff's Office
Now 15, he is suing the couple and Union County officials for placing him in their care.
It's not clear yet how much the boy, whose identity is being protected, seeks to gain from the lawsuit.
Larson, who blamed the abuse largely on her boyfriend, was released from jail in 2015 for time served while Harper remains behind bars.
Union County Clerk's Office confirmed documents were submitted on his behalf by a court-appointed guardian on November 14.
The boy was placed into Larson and Harper's care in 2005. He had been living with an aunt after being separated from his mother as she moved from another state.
Soon after being taken in by the pair, they began abusing him.
They took the boy and other children living at the house out of school under the false promise of teaching them at home.
While all of them were abused, the boy received the worst treatment.
He was handcuffed to a steel anvil in the room where he slept on the floor, removing his shackles only to force him to scrub the floors and walls of the filthy house.
Harper maimed him with needles and burned his face with electrical wires to 'teach him a lesson,' the child said at the time.
Days before his rescue, he was blamed by the couple for the death of one of their chickens.
As punishment, Harper made him wear the dead bird slung around his neck on a string.
The child's mother said she tried to win custody of him back after learning he had been taken away from her family and placed into care in 2005.
Larson however told authorities he had developed a bond with her and argued that he should continue living with her.
The boy said she told him his biological mother was ill in hospital and was not fit enough to look after him. She blamed her condition on the child, he said.
"She'd say, 'Your mom is in the hospital. She's there because of your behavior. You're killing her,'" he said in 2015.
The boy was found on the porch of this squalid home in North Carolina where he and four other children lived with the couple. Photo / WCNC
Larson, worked for the Department of Social Services. Her boyfriend was an emergency room nurse.
Authorities rescued all of the children, who were all aged seven-14, from the feces infested home in 2013.
Despite the boy's testimony to police that he feared for his life while in their care, Larson spent just two years behind bars before being released to live in the same county where the boy was being looked after by his biological mother.
She was sentenced to 17 months imprisonment in 2015 after admitting four counts of child abuse but was released for time serviced after her 2013 arrest.
Harper was jailed for 10 and a half years for maiming, intentional child abuse inflicting serious injury and assault with a deadly weapon.
