(WYMT/Gray News) – A couple in Kentucky was sentenced after abusing children to the point that one sucked insulation from the walls to try to get water, authorities said.
Mary Hall and Jerome Norman appeared before Judge Eddy Coleman in Pike Circuit Court, each entering a blind guilty plea for the roles prosecutors said they played in abusing three children who were placed under Hall’s care.
Hall took over guardianship of her sister’s children after her sister died in a car crash in 2018.
Prosecutors said Hall moved with the children in 2023 when she began a relationship with Norman.
Soon after, the principal and teachers at Kimper Elementary School, where the students were enrolled, began noticing mysterious bruises and signs of hunger on at least one student.
“And if it weren’t for the folks at the school, we may have never known,” Amber Hunt said. Hunt was appointed guardian ad litem.
After a winter storm in 2025 left students out of the classroom for an extended break, those concerns became a complaint to the Kentucky State Police when a student returned to class malnourished and bruised, with a chipped tooth.
“These teachers were looking to make sure he was okay. And he was not okay. He was practically starved to death for five weeks,” prosecutors said.
The complaint was followed by an immediate investigation. Troopers said they found the children had been living in a room that was locked from the outside, with the windows boarded up.
Officials said the situation amounted to torture and that the couple was not acting out of a lack of resources.
Officials said the children were forced to do manual labor and were punished in several ways, including withholding food, with one child seemingly receiving the brunt of the abuse.
“He sucked the insulation in the walls trying to get water,” said Amber Hunt, appointed guardian ad litem.
The children were taught to hide the truth from others. He said the child who received the most abuse was not allowed to go on trips with his class or eat cake or pizza with his peers.
The judge sentenced each to 20 years for one count of first-degree criminal child abuse and to five years for each count of second-degree child abuse, with the terms to run concurrently for a total of 20 years.