JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- The family of a woman who pleaded guilty earlier this year to locking her teenage son in a bed told a judge she is not the monster prosecutors make her out to be and urged him not to give her a long prison sentence.
Brenda Sullivan could receive up to 20 years on three counts of aggravated child abuse.
In the first of what could be a three-day sentencing hearing, Sullivan's stepson testified that she locked her teenage son in what he called a pedia-crib for his own protection.
"If he was uncontrollable and we couldn't control him.... When he calmed down he was let out," said Nathan Sullivan, who broke down at times on the stand.
Prosecutors said Brenda Sullivan's 17-year-old adopted son weighed 49 pounds when authorities removed him from the home in 2005.
A police report said the boy was starving and suffered psychosocial dwarfism -- a lack of physical and emotional growth caused by abuse. Authorities also say he was forced to wear a diaper.
Sullivan told a judge at the time that Ohio authorities told her to keep the boy, who had severe medical and emotional problems, in a crib.
Duval County Circuit Judge Mallory Cooper was shown photos of the boy when he was taken into state custody and what he looks like now, three years later.
Sullivan has insisted a doctor prescribed the crib to keep the boy she called "unruly" under control, something her sister-in-law explained in court.
"His time-outs couldn't be like a regular time-out," said Sullivan's sister-in-law, Ordrian Sullivan. "If you sat him in he corner, he's dismantle something or try to take a speaker apart and put the wires in a socket. So they put him in his bed until he decided to calm down."
Prosecutors said this treatment was not punishment, but abuse. They said no teenager should ever be put in a cage and argue his size was unimaginable.
While defense witnesses occupied most of Friday's testimony, prosecutors are expected to begin presenting their case on Monday.
Sullivan's husband, Wilson, was also arrested, but died in January 2007 while awaiting trial. Brenda Sullivan's bond was recently revoked. A sentencing date has not been scheduled.