Charlie Chaplin’s son has insisted his father ‘fell in love with a lot of young ladies’ but he ‘wasn’t forcing them to have sex’. 

The comedy pioneer had four wives, marrying Mildred Harris, then 16, when he was almost 30, Lita Grey, just 16 at the time, when he was 35, Paulette Goddard, then 26, when he was 47, and Oona O’Neill, aged just 18, when he was 53.

Michael Chaplin, 77, the second child and eldest son from Charlie’s fourth marriage, told The Guardian that he does not defend his father’s controversial marriages, however, he added: ‘They were young brides, but he was not breaking the law.’

‘The rock singer Jerry Lee Lewis married a girl of 13 and he got into trouble. My father didn’t get into trouble because she was a bit older, I suppose,’ said Michael, who resides in south-west France.

He continued: ‘I don’t want to defend my father, but I don’t think he was ever someone to use women purely sexually. He fell in love with a lot of young ladies, but he wasn’t forcing them to have sex.’

The English comic actor, who rose to fame in the era of silent film and is best known for his on-screen persona, The Tramp, remained married to Michael’s mother Oona for 34 years, from 1943 until his death in 1977. 

Charlie’s early years in London, where he was born in 1889, were marked by poverty and hardship – he had been sent to a workhouse twice by the age of nine.

His mother, part-Romany music-hall singer Hannah Chaplin, was committed to a mental asylum when he was 14 years old. 

She’d already had one son out of wedlock and, although she was married to a successful music-hall artist called Charles Chaplin, it’s unlikely that he was Charlie’s real father.

Whatever the truth, Chaplin senior gave the infant his name. But a year after the birth, he walked out — probably because he suspected Hannah of infidelity — leaving her and the boys to lead an impoverished existence.

From a young age, Charlie worked as a stage actor and comedian, touring music halls, until aged 19, he was scouted by the Fred Karno company and taken to the United States, where he later appeared in Keystone Studios in 1914.

Charlie adopted his most famous screen persona in the 1915 movie, The Tramp, which gained global recognition – and starred in thirty-five films within one year at Keystone Studios.

The actor went on to produce his own films, releasing them through Essanay Film Manufacturing Company and the Mutual Film Corporation.

By 1918, he was one of the world’s most prominent figures – and yet, his time in the spotlight was not without controversy, thanks to his four marriages with ‘young brides’. He is also alleged to have slept with over 2,000 women.

Here, FEMAIL delves into the stories of his controversial age-gap marriages… 

Mildred Harris, 16, when he was 29

One of the first to fall for Charlie’s charms was 16-year-old child actress Mildred Harris, whom he met at a party in 1918.

By then aged 29 and one of the richest actors in Hollywood, he was infatuated. He sent bouquets of roses to the hotel in which Mildred was staying, and lay in wait for her in his car outside the studio where she was working. Before long, they became lovers.

When Mildred informed him that she was pregnant, however, he panicked; the last thing he wanted, at the time, was domestic responsibility. But he was well aware that he needed to avoid a terrible scandal.

A quiet wedding was arranged at the home of the local registrar, and he took Mildred home to a leased house, described by one of her friends as a ‘symphony in lavender and ivory, exquisite in every detail’.

Soon after they’d moved into this paradise, however, it became clear that Mildred wasn’t pregnant at all. She’d either misread her symptoms or tricked him into matrimony.

This suspicion could not have made married life any easier to bear — particularly as Chaplin knew that he wasn’t in love.

He gave Mildred her own chauffeur, servants and unlimited credit at the shops, but he was irritable and moody in her company and gave nothing of himself.

Soon, the new Mrs Chaplin was indeed carrying his child. It was not a happy time for anyone concerned: at one stage, she was reported to have suffered a nervous breakdown and been hospitalised for three weeks.

Her situation wasn’t helped by Chaplin’s frequent affairs with other women. Mildred later complained that ‘Charlie married me and then he forgot all about me’. While Chaplin was working on a film called A Day’s Pleasure in July 1919, she gave birth to his son.

Norman had malformed intestines and died three days later. Charlie was inconsolable for a day or two, but then moved out of the house and took up permanent residence at the Los Angeles Athletic Club.

In April 1920, Mildred Chaplin began divorce proceedings, citing ‘cruelty’. During the subsequent case, she painted a bleak picture of life with Charlie.

If she invited her own friends to the house, he simply wouldn’t come home. Nor would he ever tell her when he’d be back: ‘He said he had to be free to live his own life and do as he pleased.’

‘He was short-tempered, impatient and treated me like a cretin,’ she protested.

In an out-of-court settlement, Mildred was granted $100,000 and a share of Chaplin’s property. For Chaplin, who was in many respects a withdrawn and secretive man, the case had been deeply wounding. 

Charlie claimed the marriage stunted his creativity and subsequently struggled to produce his film Sunnyside. 

The union officially ended in April 1920, with Charlie penning that they were ‘irreconcilably mismated’.

Married Lita Grey, 16, when he was 35

The actor is thought to have seduced his second wife, Lita Grey, when she was 15 and he was 35.

By this stage, Chaplin’s star was on the rise and he became a huge hit with audiences with films The Kid and The Gold Rush, attracting vast crowds to his public appearances. 

In 1920, he spotted 12-year-old Lillita Louis MacMurray on the set of The Kid and set about modelling her into an actress. 

He changed her name to Lita Grey and is thought to have seduced her in 1924, when she was 15 and he was 35, which could have led to a charge for statutory rape even then in California.

The teenage actress revealed a surprise pregnancy, adding to the despair of Lita’s mother, who threatened to report Charlie to the police.

The unexpected news forced the actor into another discreet marriage – this time in Mexico. Lita was 16 and Charlie was 35 on their wedding day in 1924.

On the pairs wedding night Chaplin was also said to have confided in friends that the union was a better prospect than prison.

In her 1966 memoir My Life with Chaplin, Lita wrote:  ‘We were married in Mexico because Charlie didn’t want much said about the marriage. On the way back on the train he was quite nasty.

‘We were standing out on the platform between cars while the train was travelling and he said, ‘We could just end this whole situation if you just jump’.’

Despite his contempt for his wife, however, he was ‘a human sex machine’ she later revealed, who could make love six times a night without noticeable fatigue.

The couple had two children: Charles Jr. and Sydney Earl. The marriage, which lasted three years, came to a bitter end in court. 

Lita accused her husband of statutory rape, seduction of a minor, soliciting abortions and ‘perverted sexual desires’.

She filed for custody of their two children and alleged cruelty and forced sex acts in her petition, while Chaplin referred to her as a ‘blackmailer, gold-digger and little w****’.

Lita was awarded a divorce settlement of more than $800,000, which would be around $14m today and the most expensive split in Hollywood history at the time.

For years afterwards, she struggled with depression and alcohol. She tried to set the issue straight in interviews, but the topic often strayed back to matters of his genius. 

In his autobiography, Charlie dedicated three sentences to Lita, and never mentioned her by name. In an interview he said: ‘I’m not going into that sort of thing. I don’t owe it to anybody.’ 

Married Paulette Goddard, 26, when he was 47

Charlie’s third marriage was to Paulette Goddard, a former child model and actress who featured The Great Dictator. She was 26 and Charlie was 47.

She soon moved into his mansion, and he cast her as his leading lady in Modern Times, a satire on the machine age. 

Once, in her presence, Chaplin told his oldest son that ‘your stepmother worked very hard today and I had to tell her a few things about acting’. Paulette lay down on the sofa and cried. 

Paulette’s career spanned six decades – from the 1920s to the 1970s – and she was a leading actress during the Golden Age of Hollywood. 

While the relationship only lasted from 1936 to 1942, it is said to have ended on amicable terms. 

Married Oona O’Neill, 18, when he was 53

Within a year of his and Paulette’s divorce, he moved on to his fourth and final wife Oona O’Neill, who bore him eight children and stayed with him until his death in 1977. 

The couple were said to be soulmates. They tied the knot in June 1943 when Oona was 18 and Charlie was 53. 

They had met the previous year when Charlie was considering the teenager for a part in his film Shadow and Substance – and were inseparable from then on.

Their daughter Geraldine said in a 2022 film: ‘My mother was so young when she met him, she was 17 and he was 52. They fell in love and then as soon as she turned 18 they married.

‘Everyone thought she was just a bimbo and she would be gone soon. But they were mad about each other.’

Meanwhile Eugene called his mother ‘the sunshine’ in their family’s lives. 

In 1952, the producer travelled to London for the premiere of his latest film, Limelight.

However, the following day, Attorney General James McGranery revoked Charlie’s re-entry permit, stating that he would have to agree to an interview about his political views before returning to the US.

Charlie gave a press conference in London where he insisted that he was not a communist and said he ‘wants nothing more for humanity than a roof over every man’s head.’

Oona stood by her husband and the pair eventually set up home in Switzerland.  They had eight children: Geraldine, Michael, Josephine, Victoria, Eugene, Jane, Annette and Christopher.

Charlie’s next visit to the US would be to accept an honorary Oscar in 1972 for his contributions.

By Rex Martinich for the Australian Associated Press

Published: 11:49 PM EST, January 22, 2024 | Updated: 01:22 EST, January 23, 2024

A 15-year-old boy and his friend were arrested for allegedly killing the former's 77-year-old grandmother in Delhi's Shahdara area and stealing money from her house.

Crime in Delhi: In a shocking incident, a 77-year-old woman was murdered, allegedly by her own 15-year-old grandson, in Delhi's Shahdara area, police said on Saturday. Officials said the teenager killed the woman with the help of his friend and absconded from her house with Rs 14,000 in cash.

The two boys, both 15 years old, were arrested and stolen money was also recovered from the main suspect, police said.

Giving details, a senior police official said the elderly woman's husband found her dead on her bed in the bedroom of their house in GTB Enclave on Thursday evening. Initially, the man thought she had died of natural causes as he did not notice any injuries on her body.

However, when the family members heard the news of the woman's death, they arrived and noticed that the deceased woman had an injury mark on the right side of her forehead, the official said.

Later, the older man discovered cash was missing from their safe and alerted police, police said.

“Investigations revealed that the elderly couple's 15-year-old grandson, who was studying in Class 9, had come to the house with his friend on Thursday when the victim was alone,” police said.

When the teenager was questioned by police on Friday, he burst into tears and confessed to the crime before being arrested, they added.

During interrogation, he told police that he entered the house with his friend with the motive to steal cash. When he found his grandmother in bed, he allegedly smothered her face with a blanket and hit her on the head with a blunt object.

The duo orchestrated the murder in a way that made the death appear natural, police said.

The main accused, who lives with his parents in another house in the same locality, said he needed the money for personal enjoyment, she added.

The boy's friend, who is also 15 years old, has been arrested from the same locality, they added.

(With PTI inputs)

A teenage girl who died from a heroin injection, an aborted foetus taken by police without the mother’s knowledge and another child made to act like a dog in a cage are just some of the horror stories brought about by Rochdale’s grooming gangs.

Dozens of young girls were targeted, abused and raped by gangs of mainly Asian men between 2004 and 2012 in the Greater Manchester town, with police and council bosses failing to investigate credible evidence.

A new report published today revealed the plight faced by the girls who were the subject of this abuse and the struggle they faced to be believed, as well as the harassment when they gave evidence against their abusers.

The damning dossier, which has identified 96 men who are still deemed a potential risk to children, has sparked calls from whistleblowers that there is ‘categorically’ still grooming taking place in the town.

The report makes for distressing reading, revealing the heartbreaking stories of just some of the victims of the depraved gangs of men, many of whom are yet to be brought to justice for their crimes.

It also emerged today that:

• A pair of ‘lone voices’ had flagged clear evidence of ‘prolific serial rape of countless children in Rochdale’ which wasn’t acted upon
• Many abusers continue to walk free, with 96 men identified as a potential risk to children;
• Abuse is ‘categorically’ still happening in Rochdale, a detective-turned-campaigner said;
• Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham apologised for the ‘detailed and distressing’ 

Among the cases touched upon on in the report is the tragic death of 15-year-old Victoria Agoglia, who passed away after taking a heroin overdose in 2003.

In a letter sent to police, the girl revealed how she was sleeping with ‘people older’ than her and ‘ half of them I don’t even know their names. I am a slag.’

She went on: ‘I think it I did it just to impress the boys and they treated me like ****. All the things I lost for drugs. Boys, my family, I lost all of that.’

Vulnerable Victoria, who ran away from her terraced home 21 times in the space of two months in the lead-up to her death, had been raped and was known by her carers to be used for sex by older men in exchange for cash, alcohol and hard drugs.

In September 2003 she visited the home of a 50-year-old Asian man – Mohammed Yaqoob – who injected her with heroin. She died in hospital five days later. He was later jailed for three and half years for injecting her with a noxious substance after being cleared of manslaughter.

Maggie Oliver, a former detective who resigned from Greater Manchester Police to go public with her views on grooming gangs, revealed the letter Victoria wrote was included in a police report which was never acted on.

Ms Oliver wrote the report, which even started with a picture of Victoria and her letter in a bid to highlight her case, after launching Operation Augusta in 2004 which set out to investigate the Rochdale child abuse ring.

But shockingly the investigation was quietly shelved by police bosses while Ms Oliver was on a three-month break.

It wasn’t until eight years later that the beasts behind the operation which saw girls plied with alcohol and drugs before being used as sex slaves came to justice. 

While the new report focused on events taking place from a year after Victoria’s death, it concluded that lessons were not learned from her death or the resulting Operation Augusta, in which just two of almost 100 suspects were jailed. 

That was despite an investigation into her death revealing 57 victims of grooming gangs, some as young as 12 years old.

One case highlighted by the report is that of Child 44, a teenage girl who had an abortion after being abused at the age of 13 in 2009.

It was revealed that Greater Manchester Police (GMP) secretly took the foetus and performed a DNA test on it to try and link it to possible suspects.

However, when no matches came up, it was left in a freezer at Rochdale police station and was only found when it was uncovered in a ‘routine property review’.

The girl who had the abortion would only find out in 2011 that it had been taken by the police, with the moment she found out emotionally being reenacted in the BBC drama ‘Three Girls’.

She told the authors of the 173-page report that police had ‘robbed’ her of her unborn child and said it was ‘disgusting’ police had done so without her consent.

In the meantime she had continued to be abused by a grooming gang and at one point was even at risk of being taken to Pakistan by them.

A trial involving the men who abused her eventually took place in 2012, but the girl would find out in the lead-up to this that the man who got her pregnant was not to be charged with her rape. 

He was instead jailed for eight years for conspiracy and trafficking for sexual exploitation, allowing him to be released four years into his sentence, reports the Guardian.

Things got worse for Child 44, as she reported being threatened by a man with a gun before the trial and being harassed and abused on the street by supporters of the men who raped and abused her.

The girl, who even bumped into her abuser in a supermarket after he was released from prison without her being informed, said police told her to just ‘lock your door’ when she asked for help about the harassment.

Another girl who also gave evidence against her abusers reported that her house was ‘trashed, with slag and grass written across the wall’, while her shed was burned down and chickens killed in a campaign of harassment.

The damning dossier also claims that no action was taken against a ‘pimp’ who got a 15-year-old girl pregnant, while another child claimed she was kept locked in cages and made to act like a dog or baby, with again, no action being taken against the men allegedly involved.

The report is the third of four written by child protection specialist Malcolm Newsam CBE and former senior police officer Gary Ridgway – and saw apologies this morning from Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester Police and Rochdale Council.

The authors previously led a review of Operation Augusta, an investigation into grooming gangs in South Manchester, which was published in 2020, and the review into child safeguarding practices in Oldham, published in 2022.

It followed criticism of failings within Rochdale Council and Greater Manchester Police aired in BBC documentary, Betrayed Girls.

The report considered claims by Sara Rowbotham, co-ordinator of a young people’s Crisis Intervention Team, and Maggie Oliver, former Detective Constable involved with the first large-scale investigation into grooming in Rochdale, Operation Span, launched in 2010.

It found that the pair of ‘lone voices’ had flagged clear evidence of ‘prolific serial rape of countless children in Rochdale’ but that this was not acted upon, with the children’s unwillingness to make a formal complaint repeatedly used as an excuse for not investigating.

Mr Newsam, lead author, said: ‘GMP and Rochdale Council failed to prioritise the protection of children who were being sexually exploited by a significant number of men within the Rochdale area.

‘This review was initiated following the serious allegations made by both Maggie Oliver and Sara Rowbotham and we have found through this review their allegations to be substantiated.

‘Both GMP and Rochdale Council failed to respond appropriately to these concerns.

‘Successive police operations were launched over this period, but these were insufficiently resourced to match the scale of the widespread organised exploitation.

‘Consequently, children were left at risk and many of their abusers to this day have not been apprehended.’

Mr Newsam and Mr Ridgway said: ‘CSE continued to be treated as a low priority and under-resourced by GMP.’

By October 2012, a review group chaired by GMP identified 127 potential victims whose cases had not been acted on – a figure which later grew to 260 potential victims.

After Operation Span, three more investigations – Operation Routh, Operation Doublet and Operation Lytton – saw 30 men convicted, many of whom received lengthy sentences.

Files held by officials for 111 children revealed ‘a significant probability that 74 of these children were being sexually exploited at that time, and in 48 of those cases, there were serious failures to protect the child’, the report revealed.

A fourth review is still to take place by Mr Newsam and Mr Ridgway, which is to ‘consider current practice across Greater Manchester to address the risk of child sexual exploitation’ and recent police investigations.

Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham called the report ‘a detailed and distressing account of how many young people were so seriously failed’.

He added: ‘That said, it fulfils the purpose of why I set up this review in the first place.

‘It is only by facing up fully and unflinchingly to what happened that we can be sure of bringing the whole system culture change needed when it comes to protecting children from abuse.’

He apologised to the victims and said: ‘We are sorry that you were so badly failed by the system that should have protected them.

‘I have asked Greater Manchester Police and Rochdale Council to ensure that every possible action is taken to follow up any leads arising from this report and to pursue any potential perpetrators.’

A series of initiatives have taken place around Rochdale since 2012, including better engagement with potential victims and a scheme encouraging hotel owners and taxi firms to report concerns.

Last year, an Ofsted report regarding Rochdale Council – including the Complex Safeguarding Hub – was published and confirmed that ‘children at risk receive an effective response’.

Rochdale Council leader Councillor Neil Emmott said the authority is ‘deeply sorry’ for the ‘very serious failures that affected the lives of children in our borough’ and how officials ‘failed to take the necessary action’.

And Greater Manchester Police Chief Constable Stephen Watson said: ‘It remains to be a matter of profound regret that victims of child sexual exploitation in Rochdale in the early 2000s were failed by Greater Manchester Police – to them, I apologise.

‘I also recognise the plight of Maggie Oliver and Sara Rowbotham – who advocated for victims and survivors when no one else did, and ultimately enabled the review and publication of this report.’

He added: ‘Since nine men were convicted following Operation Span in 2012, there have been a further 135 arrests, 432 charges, and 32 convictions (for child sex grooming).’

Ms Oliver, who resigned from Greater Manchester Police in 2012 to publicly reveal the extent of the police failings about child sexual exploitation, said she remained ‘angry’ that ‘not one senior officer or official has ever been held individually responsible for these failures, lies and cover ups’.

She said the report ‘confirms the truth of what I have been saying for over 12 years’.

Drawing a parallel with the ongoing Horizon scandal at the Post Office, she added: ‘There are so many parallels between that case and this: ‘ordinary’ people being criminalised and silenced, institutional cover ups and corruption in an effort to protect the brand whatever the cost to affected individuals, refusal to acknowledge any wrongdoing.’

She added: ‘I am also not assured that lessons have been learned. I can absolutely, categorically say that through our work today at The Maggie Oliver Foundation (a support group she founded), we see on a daily basis that victims and survivors of sexual offences are still routinely treated badly or even inhumanely, still not believed, still judged, still dismissed when they report these horrendous crimes.’

The report’s publication comes a year after an independent review into child sexual exploitation in neighbouring Oldham found the ringleader of a notorious grooming gang, Shabir Ahmed, later jailed for 22 years, was able to continue working as a welfare rights officer by Oldham Council with police failing to tell his employers even after his arrest.

It is not the first official report into child sex exploitation in Rochdale – a report in 2013 found that hundreds of young girls were allowed to fall into the hands of Asian grooming gangs because police and social workers may have been scared of seeming racist.

They refused to believe that race was an issue even though dozens of young, white girls were being specifically targeted and groomed for sex by older Pakistani men.

Children in the town of Rochdale were let down by all 17 agencies that were meant to protect them, the report said.

Police dismissed accusations of political correctness, saying the girls were targeted because they were vulnerable, not because they were white – but a review into the scandal said there was a ‘colour-blind’ approach by police and social workers that was ‘potentially dangerous’.

This is the disturbing moment a predator tries to film a 15-year-old schoolgirl under the partition of a unisex changing cubicle at a water park.

Liam Warlow is seen on CCTV hanging out in the changing room at LC Swansea water park in South Wales, looking down the corridor as he stands in the doorway of a cubicle.

The video then cuts to the 27-year-old running out of the locker room after trying to film the girl with his phone as she undressed.

Swansea Crown Court heard Warlow was in the changing area after drying off and getting dressed when he saw the girl, who was at the water park with her mother. He then straightened his hair in the mirror while “paying special attention” to the girl standing next to him.

After she enters a booth, Warlow walks into the adjacent booth and tries to film her with his phone.

The girl kicked the phone when she saw it fall under the partition and Warlow quickly ran out of the booth.

After the incident, Warlow was seen running out of the leisure center without saying goodbye to family and friends and he was there. Two days later he was arrested at his then partner’s home.

Judge Geraint Walters said it was “absolutely clear” what Warlow was planning to do at the water park.

“After seeing her, you purposefully and with a fair degree of determination lingered in the dressing area – and at one point also looked at her through a mirror – until she entered a cubicle,” the judge said. “You went into the adjacent booth and while you were there you used your phone to film her. She said the phone was clearly recording and she could see herself on it.”

Warlow, from Cwmrhydyceirw, initially told police he had accidentally dropped his phone, which had ‘managed to start recording on its own’. Judge Walters rejected his claim, saying: ‘I would have to be very naive to accept that proposition, as would a jury, if you had tried that on them.’

After he was arrested, Warlow told police he could not remember the code to access the “private area” of his phone. The judge added that he would have to be “extremely naive” to also accept this claim.

Warlow gave police a code to access another part of his phone, which contained a video he had taken of himself masturbating in what appeared to be a public toilet stall on another occasion.

Warlow’s lawyer told the court: ‘It is clear he is deeply ashamed of what has happened. Mr Warlow states that the impact on the victim must have been devastating.”

Warlow was spared an immediate prison sentence after a judge at Swansea Crown Court suspended his six-month term for two years. The suspect pleaded guilty to observing a private act for sexual gratification. He has previous convictions for burglary and cannabis possession from 2013.

Sentencing on December 20, 2023, Judge Walters said: ‘You saw her and at that moment decided to see if you had the opportunity to film her as she undoubtedly undressed.

“Your behavior that day ruined you for quite some time. And it will be.

‘You will end up on the sex offenders register. It looks like you’ve lost your partner. No doubt you will come under the scrutiny of social services in any future relationship you have.”

Judge Walters said the sentencing guidelines led him to suspend a six-month prison sentence for two years after recognizing that “most members of the public would probably expect me to send you to prison today.”

The judge added that Warlow would have to deal with his issues surrounding filming in public for sexual arousal, which would require the defendant to complete a 43-day program.

He must also complete 45 days of ‘general rehabilitation’.

Warlow will be on the sex offenders register and subject to a sexual harm prevention order for seven years.

A Michigan law clerk threw up in court after she was shown gruesome photos of her emaciated, disabled son, whom she had starved to death.

Shanda Vander Ark, 44, stood trial for the murder and torture of 15-year-old Timothy Ferguson, who died in their home on July 6, 2022, weighing just 69 pounds. An autopsy revealed that he died of malnutrition and hypothermia.

Prosecutor Matt Roberts showed photos of the teen’s fragile body to Vander Ark in court Thursday afternoon and she began vomiting.

She tortured Timothy, who had autism with speech and motor disabilities, by feeding him only bread covered in hot sauce, deprived him of sleep and forced him into ice baths as punishment.

Vander Ark didn’t show up for trial Friday due to a “medical problem,” but a jury found her guilty of first-degree murder and child abuse in her absence. She will be sentenced on January 29 and faces life in prison.

Vander Ark took the witness stand Thursday and began hyperventilating and showing signs of a nervous breakdown.

Prosecutor Roberts handed her photos of Timothy’s emaciated body and asked, “Did he look like this when you gave him a bath?”

She immediately began gagging before vomiting out of view of the jury. She then apologized to the court, asked for a moment and started crying.

The next day, Vander Ark, who has five biological children, including a nine-year-old boy, was found guilty of torturing and killing Timothy.

Timothy’s older brother Paul, 20, has also been charged with first-degree child molestation but testified against their mother in court.

“I’d say it’s a bit like Stockholm syndrome,” Paul said on the stand.

‘I long to find a role model who, because of my own low self-esteem, would do anything to make them proud of me.

“That’s not an excuse, I know, but I’m glad I was able to at least realize it so I could correct it.”

Vander Ark, a law clerk in Newaygo County Circuit Court, previously testified that she purchased spicy hot sauce online after Paul thought it would be a good idea to punish Timothy.

A text message exchange between the pair also revealed that she questioned whether they should drop the hot sauce on the young boy’s genitals.

“I wonder what it would feel like to have that hot sauce on your genitals.” “I’m not saying you should touch it there, not at all, but a little drip there, that’s terrible,” she asked.

Her attorney argued that she did not understand the harm she was causing her son and did not know he was starving.

She also claimed that she locked the family’s refrigerator, freezer and pantry because Timothy was trying to eat frozen food and uncooked meat.

Vander Ark allegedly covered the house and the small closet where Timothy slept with motion sensors, alarms and live feed cameras.

Prosecutor Roberts said she tortured the child by feeding him hot sauce and punishing him with ice baths. ‘She killed him. She starved him,” he said.

Vander Ark did not have legal custody of Timothy, according to authorities, and he had been in West Michigan as of May 2021.

Prosecutor Roberts said she should not have had the child in the first place and that an investigation by Oklahoma Child Protective Services between 2009 and 2012 resulted in a recommendation to terminate her parental rights.

Vander Ark agreed to give up custody in 2012 to avoid permanent separation of parental rights.

A court document shows Timothy, Paul, Nolan, 23, and daughter Millie, 19, were awarded to their father Eric Ferguson and she was ordered to pay child support.

Vander Ark remarried Adam and lived in his home until he suffered a stroke and had to move in with his parents.

She claimed this was a catalyst for Timothy’s acting out. “There were a few situations where Tim deliberately kept everyone in the house awake,” she said in court.

“He would deliberately set off the motion detectors, he would make noise.”

Hours before Timothy died, Paul is said to have placed him in an ice bath for almost nine hours.

Paul told the jury that he abused his brother at the instruction of his mother.

by Audrina Patridge The cause of death of 15-year-old niece Sadie Loza has been revealed.

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department confirmed to multiple media outlets on Wednesday, November 15, that the teen’s cause of death was a narcotic overdose. TMZ was the first to break the news.

That’s what the authorities said People Wednesday that “an investigation remains ongoing to determine if there are any potential criminal charges.”

Patridge, 38, confirmed in February that Sadie had died just a week after her 15th birthday.

“My heart aches to even write this. My beautiful niece is now in heaven,” she said Hills alum written via an Instagram tribute at the time. “I know it’s not goodbye forever, but it’s the hardest thing to say goodbye for now. We will miss you and cherish every moment we had with you. Rest in peace!! We love you forever and ever!”

Sadie’s mother, Casey Loza – Patridge’s sister – first shared the news via Instagram earlier that day, writing: “Sadie Raine Loza has left this earth for heaven.”

She continued, “Writing this was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Since I don’t know the right words, I’ll leave you with this. Sadie liked to remind me that the first law of thermodynamics, or the law of conservation of energy, works. in all areas of life. ‘Energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be changed from one form to another.’”

Casey, 37, noted that “transformation is a better word than death,” adding that Sadie’s story “will save countless lives” and that her memory “will never be forgotten.” She concluded, “Rest in peace you brilliant starseed. You are with your creator. We will miss you very much. I love you.”

Casey and estranged husband Kyle Loza welcomed Sadie in February 2008. The parents married in March 2009 before welcoming Sadie’s brother Draven in April 2010. They welcomed another son, Vallon, in October 2018.

The family previously appeared on Patridge’s short-lived 2011 Vh1 reality series, Audrinawhich lasted 10 episodes and included Audrina, Casey and Kyle as well as their sister Samantha Partridgebrother Mark Partridge and their parents, Lynne And Mark Partridge.

In November 2016, Sadie was the flower girl at Patridge’s wedding to ex-husband Corey Bohan. “Love this photo of my beautiful niece Sadie and I on the dance floor,” Audrina captioned an Instagram photo of her and Sadie at the wedding. “I’m trying to teach her some #dwts moves.” (Patridge and Bohan, 41, were married for two years before divorcing in 2018. They share daughter Kirra, 8.)

Following news of the teen’s death in February, Audrina’s former co-stars took to social media to express their deepest condolences for the devastating loss.

“Omgggg, this is killing me. So sorry for your loss, Audrina. This is heartbreaking,” Kristin Cavallari wrote, while Brody Jenner replied: “Sending love to you and the family.”