They called him their "golden child," but Robert Caravella and Carol Ann Hann treated their only son like an animal, prosecutors said Wednesday, subjecting him to a life of squalor and sexual abuse.
The boy, scheduled to testify today at his parents' trial in Luzerne County Court, told a court last year that Caravella forced him to have sex with Hann after introducing him to pornography at age 8.
The boy, now 14, testified at a preliminary hearing after Caravella and Hann's arrest in June 2011 that Caravella would coach him before and during the sexual encounters with Hann.
An attorney for the couple, Andrew Katsock, argued in an opening statement Wednesday that Hann's obesity at the time of the alleged abuse made it physically impossible for her to assault her son.
Caravella, 53, is charged with conspiracy to commit rape of a child, corruption of minors, endangering the welfare of children and distributing explicit sexual material to minors.
A jury convicted him in April on 13 charges for sexually abusing two underage girls between 2002 and 2005. A judge has postponed sentencing in that case until after the conclusion of the current trial.
Hann, 45, is charged with rape of a child, corruption of minors, endangering the welfare of children and incest.
The boy's doctor, dentist and therapist will also testify today, prosecutors said.
Caravella and Hann regarded the boy as a "genius," former Luzerne County Children and Youth Service case worker Kelly Flaherty testified Wednesday. The couple ended the boy's lone friendship and enrolled him in an online charter school to shield him from what they saw as the "bad things" he might learn from the outside world, Flaherty said.
Flaherty, testifying Wednesday, described for jurors the "bad things" Caravella and Hann were exposing their son to - including the putrid environment inside the Gould Street, Plymouth, home where they forced the boy to spend almost all of his time.
The home, Flaherty said, appeared strewn with trash and infested with fleas. An upstairs bathroom, she said, reeked of urine. At the time, according to Flaherty, the boy described Hann as "very lazy," and said she seldom, if ever, cleaned the home.
At the preliminary hearing last year, the boy said he had been given a bath about once a month, brushed his teeth "on occasion" and walked around naked because he never learned it was improper.
"I got used to it," he said.
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