A Kentucky couple has received lengthy prison sentences for subjecting children in their care to severe abuse that bears resemblance to torture.

Back in March, Jerome Norman and Mary Hall, both aged 44, entered what’s known as a blind Alford plea to three charges of first-degree criminal abuse.

An Alford plea permits defendants to assert their innocence regarding the specifics of the allegations while acknowledging that the prosecution’s evidence could likely lead a judge or jury to find them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

On Friday, Judge Eddy Coleman of the Pike Circuit Court reduced two of the charges against each defendant to lesser offenses. He then imposed the maximum sentence for each charge, while factoring in the time they had already spent in custody before the trial, as reported by the Appalachian News Express.

Officially, both Norman and Hall received a 20-year sentence for the first-degree charge and two five-year sentences for the second-degree charges. However, the court decided to have these sentences run concurrently, resulting in each serving nearly 20 years in prison. They must complete 85% of their sentence before they are eligible for parole.

The couple’s arrest took place in January 2025 after concerns arose about a child in their care who returned from winter break in poor condition, according to CBS affiliate WYMT based in Hazard. The child returned malnourished, bruised, and with a chipped tooth, prompting a report to the Kentucky State Police.

An ensuing investigation turned up more grave issues.

“These teachers were looking to make sure he was okay,” Pike County Commonwealth’s Attorney Bill Slone said in court. “And he was not okay. He was practically starved to death for five weeks.”

Troopers determined the children in the house were forced to live in a room locked from the outside with boarded-up windows. Authorities would compare the treatment to torture and insisted the couple did not want for resources to take care of the children properly.

“They were not drug addicts,” Slone said. “There were no drugs in the house. This was done with a clear mind. It was intentional.”

Hall took custody of the children after her sister died in a car crash in 2018 – their biological father was in prison for manslaughter. Then, in 2023, she moved in with Norman. That’s when things took a turn.

Soon, the children would come to school with mysterious bruises, educators noticed. At least one child displayed hunger patterns.

The oldest child was hospitalized five times – with one such stay lasting two and a half months – a social worker testified. All three children display mental emotional trauma along the lines of PTSD, ADHD, eating disorders, and development delays, she added.

“I did not see a typical child,” the social worker testified about first meeting the oldest child. “I saw evidence of prolonged suffering.”

As for where the children were kept, the social worker said there were “clear signs of confinement” when warrants were executed.

The children were also forced to perform manual labor and punished through the withholding of food – with the couple meting out most of the abuse to one child in particular.

“He sucked the insulation in the walls trying to get water,” the guardian ad litem of the children, a physician, said on Friday.

That child was forced to eat baby rice, the physician testified.

“Food is a basic human right,” she said. “It is not a punishment. You cannot take food away from a child because the child acts in a way you don’t agree with. They were tortured with food.”

The physician asked the court to impose the maximum sentence – which he did. The prosecutor welcomed that sentence as well.

“We are pleased with that,” Slone said. “Our laws don’t allow for cruel and unusual punishment, even to prisoners. So, they’ll never be subjected to the kind of punishment that they subjected those children to.”