A Florida couple has been charged with child abuse and neglect after they allegedly locked their 6-year-old child in a cage while they went to work.
Dustin Huff, 35, and Yurui Xie, 31, were both employees at the University of Florida, according to the Independent Florida Alligator, which said that Huff was a biological scientist in the school’s Horticultural Sciences Department and Xie was the Plant Pathology Department’s safety manager.
They’ve both been charged with two counts of aggravated child abuse and one count of child neglect.
The two are UF graduates and were ordered off all school property on Monday and placed on administrative leave, WOFL reported. The station said the couple was arrested on Friday when the 6-year-old told a school official he didn’t want to go home because he didn’t want to be put back in his cage.
Huff told detecitves that the boy does not sleep in a cage and called the enclosure a “bed frame,” WCJB reported. He showed it to the officers, who described it as a large, unsanded, wooden enclosure that looked like a makeshift cage.
The child told the Department of Children and Families that he was kept in the enclosure at night until 7 a.m., when it was time to get ready for school. Xie would put him back in it when he got home from school, and then she would leave the house.
Xie said she would take a break from work to meet her son and put him in the enclosure. He would be inside for a few hours before Huff arrived at home.
The couple told investigators they’d been using the enclosure for a year.
Xie told the officers that their son has ADHD, was disobedient, and that they’d been unable to secure childcare for him because of his behavior.
The officers found a second, similar enclosure in a closet in the master bedroom that was used for a second child. The officers said both enclosures had springs and rails that could hurt the children.
Huff and Xie were being held at the Alachua County Jail on $600,000 bonds.
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[Featured image: Zurui Xie and Dustin Huff/Alachua County Sheriff’s Office]
