The Connecticut stepmom accused of imprisoning her stepson in a foul bedroom for two decades is back in court to argue his secret identity should be revealed — a motion that his biological mother called “appalling.”
Kimberly Sullivan, 57, is due in a Waterbury court Friday to fight prosecutors’ request to keep her 32-year-old stepson’s newly assumed identity hidden from her and the public, which the state argued was necessary for his own safety.
But Sullivan doesn’t buy the state’s argument — and thinks she has the right to confront the man accusing her of locking him in a storage closet for 22 hours a day since he was 11.
“The state’s position, stripped of its appeal to ‘victim’ protection, amounts to this: the accuser may assume a new identity, relocate to an undisclosed address, and the defendant charged with serious felonies arising from their decades-long relationship must be kept in the dark,” a motion from Sullivan’s attorney, Ioannis Kaloidis, read.
The attorney put it more succinctly after a brief court appearance earlier in October.
“We believe there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to shield the accuser from my client. In fact, my client has the right to come to the confrontation, has the right to confront her accuser in a public setting,” Kaloidis said, according to NBC Connecticut.
Sullivan’s stepson assumed a new name after he was rescued from a fire at their Waterbury house in February — an inferno he claimed to have set intentionally to escape her clutches — and has been publicly known only by “S” since then, with his new home also kept a secret.
The stepson weighed just 68 pounds when officers carried him from the flames, and he soon told a horror story of being pulled from school as a boy, starved and deprived of water and allowed out of his room only to do chores around the home for an hour or two a day.
And his biological mother -— who has attended every court hearing since her son was found — thinks Sullivan’s attempts to confront her son are repulsive.
“They need to keep that thing away from my son,” mom Tracy Vallerand, 53, told The Post.
“I think it’s appalling. If you look at any domestic violence situation, you’re not going to let the person who is being the evil person around the one who needs to be protected,” she said.
“It’s appalling that they even had the audacity to request that.”
Vallerand left her son in the care of his father after the couple broke up because she “had issues back then” and thought her ex and his family would be the best place for their son to be raised — but said she could never imagine the “disgusting” things that would allegedly happen to him.
“[His] family, none of them had ever, ever been like this. They were a family-oriented group, dinner with family on Sundays, holidays with the family,” Vallerand said of her ex. “I thought it would be best in my son’s well-being to stay with his father.”
Sullivan’s team, however, has claimed the father was the one in charge of how the boy was raised — which Vallerand called a predictable excuse, since he’s been dead for a year.
“If there was any inkling whatsoever that he would be in harm’s way with his father, his father wouldn’t have had him,” she added.
Vallerand has reached out to her son, but hasn’t heard back and doesn’t want to pressure him into anything.
“I think he’s had enough issues and trust issues with his past family,” the mother added.
Sullivan posted $300,000 bail and was released within days of her March arrest, but has been living with GPS monitoring and unable to contact or go near her stepson.
Earlier this month, a judge allowed Sullivan to return to the home where the abuse allegedly happened, even though the house has been left a decrepit shell since the fire.
She has also sought to have her GPS monitoring removed and keep her stepson from having any say in the conditions of her release, and is expected on Friday to fight against a prosecution motion to keep her stepson’s medical records from being revealed.
Sullivan’s attorneys called the medical information “critical to her defense,” with Kaloidis previously claiming the stepson has struggled to gain weight since he was a boy.
She has been charged with kidnapping, unlawful restraint and other abuse charges, all of which she pleaded not guilty to.
But Vallerand thinks Sullivan should suffer what her son went through if she’s found guilty.
“I hope that they would consider putting her in solitary confinement for the next 20 years, just like she did to my son,” she said. “Let her wake up every morning and think about the kind of person she is and the kind of person she should have been.”
But Sullivan’s attorneys dismissed the mother altogether.
“Ms. Vallerand is as irrelevant to the facts of this case as she has been to the life of the accuser,” Kaloidis told The Post ahead of Friday’s hearing.
