US couple charged with ‘torture’ of their foster child in Uganda

Neighbours sounded the alarm over the 10-year-old boy who was ‘continuously’ abused between 2020 and 2022, police stated.

The couple are foster dad and mom to 3 Ugandan kids [File: Badru Katumba/AFP]

An American couple in Uganda has been charged with “aggravated torture” of a 10-year-old boy of their care, police stated.

Nicholas Spencer and his spouse, Mackenzie Leigh Mathias Spencer, each aged 32, had been charged on Friday and remanded to Luzira Jail, a most safety facility on the outskirts of the capital Kampala, police stated in an announcement on Tuesday.

They had been on account of seem in court docket for a bail listening to on Wednesday.

The couple have three Ugandan kids with them underneath foster care, together with the sufferer, police stated.

The costs allege that they “continuously tortured” the boy between 2020 and 2022, with neighbours sounding the alarm for the kid who attended a faculty for youngsters with particular wants in Kampala.

When police raided the home, they discovered CCTV footage.

“Our group of investigators established, that the couple stored the sufferer barefoot, and bare all through the day, would often make him squat in a clumsy place, along with his head going through the ground and arms unfold out extensively, he spent his nights on a wood platform, with no mattress or beddings and was served chilly meals from the fridge,” the police assertion stated.

“We imagine, the sufferer may have endured extra extreme acts of torture, away from the digicam,” it added.

The police assertion urged social employees to continuously monitor the wellbeing of susceptible kids and people in foster houses, saying: “What occurred to the sufferer, within the final couple of years, in all probability may have been prevented, if that they had intently monitored the well-being of the foster kids.”

The couple arrived in Uganda nation in 2017 to volunteer at a United States-based non-profit within the city of Jinja earlier than shifting to Naguru, an upmarket Kampala suburb, to work at a start-up, police stated.

Worldwide adoptions have sparked controversy within the East African nation.

In 2020, the US authorities filed prison fees and imposed financial sanctions towards a US-based adoption ring that positioned Ugandan kids who weren't orphans with households within the US.