Ohio man and son guilty of shackling, raping girl who escaped house

TOLEDO, Ohio -- Jurors convicted a father and his adult son Friday of raping and shackling a teenage relative who escaped their basement by hiding a spare key and using it to unlock her handcuffs.

Timothy Ciboro and his son, Esten Ciboro, 28, were found guilty on charges of rape, kidnapping and child endangering.

Both men had denied abusing the fourteen-year-old girl, Timothy Ciboro’s stepdaughter, and a 9-year-old girl in their care who also testified that she had been sexually abused by the father and son.

Both girls took the stand as a comfort dog stood by after prosecutors argued it would be traumatic for them to face questioning by their alleged abusers, who were acting as their own attorneys.

Esten Ciboro told jurors during his closing argument Friday that they needed to do the right thing and “reunite this family and end their suffering.”

Timothy Ciboro was sentenced to five life sentences plus 41 years with no eligibility for parole, reports CBS affiliate WTOL. Esten Ciboro was sentenced to three life sentences plus 38 years in prison with eligibility for parole.

Before reading the sentences, Judge Linda Jennings called the Ciboros “depraved” and “evil” and their actions “disgusting, perverted and reprehensible.”  

The older girl testified earlier this week that she was forced to stay in the basement for varying lengths of time as punishment or when the men left the house and that she was allowed out to shower or use the restroom.

Officers found leg irons in the basement along with a bucket the girl said she used as a toilet, according to a police report. Prosecutors said the girl suffered both physical and mental abuse before she used the spare key to escape last summer when she was 13 years old.

The girl, whose mother was living in Las Vegas at the time, said she was left to live in the house with the men at age 7 when her mother moved away.

She said she was treated more harshly than the younger girl and a boy who lived in the house, and that her punishment for wetting the bed worsened from being spanked, to being locked in a bathroom to being chained in the basement.

Police arrested the men last May after the older girl escaped and was found outside a downtown office building more than a mile away.

The two men questioned the older girl after she described the abuse and being shackled by the ankle to a support beam in the darkened room.

At one point during her testimony on Tuesday, she told Timothy Ciboro to stop referring to himself as her dad.

 “You didn’t treat me like a dad,” she said to Ciboro, who is not her biological father.

“You think I like punishing you?” Ciboro responded.

“I would say the sexual touching you enjoyed,” answered the girl.