GUILTY CO - Amanda Joliff & Richard Smith for child abuse, Erie, 2011

According to an arrest affidavit, the boy told police that his mother, Amanda Joliff; her boyfriend, Richard Smith and the boy's sister had kept him locked in the room under Joliff's orders since early 2008.

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A woman who locked her 14-year-old son in a squalid trailer and fed him just a few times a week has been jailed for three years.

Amanda Jolliff, 37, pleaded guilty to false imprisonment and child abuse after police found the boy living in a rodent-infested mobile home in Erie, Colorado...

The neighbor called police, who discovered that Jolliff went to New York two weeks earlier with her live-in boyfriend, leaving the boy on his own.

The boyfriend, Richard Smith, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child abuse and was sentenced earlier to 60 days in jail, in addition to the 167 days he served after his arrest...

Joliff also has a daughter who is now in a foster home as well.

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"Both the judge and the prosecutor said at the hearing that Jolliff will be treated more humanely in prison than her son was by her, with three square meals a day and a clean environment," Swella said.

According to arrest warrant affidavits, the boy was discovered cowering under a neighbor's front porch last September.

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When a family friend told Chad Buss that she'd noticed a boy curled up inside the small space his own kids had used as a play fort, Buss came outside and called the 14-year-old's name again and again until the kid answered.

Buss asked the boy, who sometimes played with his own sons, why he was there. The voice said he was afraid to ask the family if he could spend the night in their trailer. He was hiding from his mom. He was scared. He didn't want to be locked in his room.

Once Buss got the boy inside, he sat him down on the couch and asked: What did you mean when you said you were locked in your room? "It didn't dawn on me what he was saying," Buss recalls. "My older son started telling me she actually had a chain lock on the door. I was like, 'Oh, my lord.' "

Details spilled out. How the boy had to urinate in bottles. How a small hole in his boarded-up window gave him the only light. Cody, who was good friends with Jolliff's 16-year-old daughter and visited the family's trailer, backed up the account.

Buss was stunned. "He's sitting there on my couch, shaking," he says. "There was something about that story that I had to believe."

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Richard Smith, 31, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Weld County court to child abuse in a plea bargain that saw charges of false imprisonment and neglect dropped.

Smith and Amanda Jolliff, 37, were arrested in October after Jolliff's son was found by a neighbor hiding under the porch of his mobile home. The man's wife told 7NEWS she offered the boy some food and the boy told her, "No. I’'ve already eaten twice this week and I don'’t need any more food."

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“He was let out in the morning to care for the ducks, which were in the house. That added to the filth,” the judge said. “Then he was locked up in the room again. He was let out once in the afternoon and maybe for dinner, which was often pasta in boxes eaten by vermin.”

The judge said the boy’s room was incredibly filthy. He said it contained a mattress without sheets that was drenched in urine and feces.

“That’s what he got to live in,” the judge said. “That was his life, not for a day, not for a week, not for a year, but for about 3-and-a-half years.”..


Defense attorney Sarah Cure said Jolliff is a victim herself.

“I truly believe that she has a mental disability that affects every aspect of her life,” Cure said. “When she was 9 years old, she was found living in a cardboard box after being booted out the house by her mother.”

Cure said Jolliff was sexually abused and was also locked in her bedroom as a child.

“She said being locked in her room made her feel safe,” Cure said. “It was better than being sexually abused.”

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Jolliff, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, kept her head bowed during most of the sentencing hearing, in which she was described by prosecutor Hollie Wilkinson as someone "who continues to see herself as a victim."

Wilkinson said when police asked her why she kept her son locked in the trailer, she told them he would "irritate me really bad."...

The conditions inside the trailer were so squalid, surfaces thick with animal droppings, that it was condemned after the arrest...

Quammen, who also sentenced Smith, said medical authorities documented that Smith was mentally challenged and was likely manipulated by Jolliff...

In 2007, the boy suffered severe wounds when he was attacked by the family dog and required reconstructive surgery, neighbors say...
Jolliff terminated her parental rights to both of her children.

Wilkinson said the boy is happy in his foster home. "He's thankful for not being locked up every day."

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An Erie woman who pleaded guilty to felony false imprisonment for keeping her 14-year-old son captive in a filthy trailer filled with animals was sentenced to three years in prison followed by two years of probation Tuesday in Weld District Court...

Her boyfriend, Richard Smith, was sentenced Monday to 60 days in jail, in addition to 167 days he had already served, for his guilty plea to misdemeanor child abuse.

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A mom who locked her son in a filthy, rat-infested trailer for more than three years has violated her parole and disappeared.

Amanda Joliff, 39, served three years and was on two years of probation when she disappeared, landing her on Weld County’s Most Wanted list. There is a reward for information about her whereabouts.

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