Couple Allegedly Let Their 6-Year-Old Boy Starve to Death as Punishment

An Illinois couple has been charged in the death of a 6-year-old boy.

Michael Roberts, the boy’s father, and Georgena Roberts, the child’s step-mother, both 42 and of Jerseyville, Illinois, have been charged in the death of a 6-year-old boy who weighed just 17 pounds at the time of his death. They are alleged to have withheld food as a form of punishment, resulting in such an extreme case of malnourishment that the child died of starvation, PEOPLE reports.

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A case was opened and charges filed against the couple after Jersey Community Hospital called the Jerseyville Police Department on Friday shortly after the boy had passed. A police statement determined that both the child and another 7-year-old boy living in the Roberts’ household were “deprived of food by their father and stepmother as a form of punishment” starting as early as December 2015.

An autopsy performed on the 6-year-old found his cause of death to be “failure to thrive due to ‘extreme malnourishment.’”

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According to police documents, a hotline call in January 2016 alerted DCFS that there was inadequate food in the home. “After a pediatric specialist concluded that the now-deceased child’s weight was a result of a medical condition, the investigation was closed as unfounded,” the statement read.

Michael Roberts and Georgena Roberts are being held in the Jersey County Jail on $500,000 bond apiece. They each face first-degree murder charges along with two counts each of endangering the life and health of a child. The Illinois Department of Children and Family took the Roberts’ five other children into protective custody and are placing them in the care of relatives.